


What's Love Got To Do With It?!

by Golden_Ticket



Series: What's Love?! [1]
Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: 2013 - 2014 era, AU, Best Friends to Lovers, But fun hopefully, F/M, Fake Dating, Fake Relationship, Forbidden Love, I know, Mutual Pining, Reality Show AU, Secret Relationship, T&S never became skating partners, The fucking boring friends to lovers again, but au, trust me I do., tv show au
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-11
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-06-25 16:12:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 99,156
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15644304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Golden_Ticket/pseuds/Golden_Ticket
Summary: AU. T&S never became skating partners but they still wound up as best friends. And now they're on a mission.**Tessa Virtue has no money and a lot of debt. Scott Moir has bought a rundown house (for some insane reason) and doesn't have the funds to fix it. So when an opportunity to make money on a new Competition Reality-TV Show presents itself, Scott talks his childhood best friend Tessa into entering.On WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?! six couples compete for amazing prizes...only one of those couples isn't a real couple at all and they stand to win a million dollars if they manage to fool the other couples and the nation into believing their love story!Will real emotions prevail or will Canada actually be fooled by fake love?(Tessa and Scott think they might be able to achieve the latter. But then again what if they got so good at fake love that even they wouldn't be able to tell the real thing from the sham anymore? It's a slippery slope...very slippery indeed.)





	1. Only Logical

**Author's Note:**

> Hello friends! I am an idiot to even start on this now because I literally have three other projects in writing now plus no time at all with my new job. So this is a kind of "pilot" chapter, to see if this is something people would have an interest in, to see if it is worth pursuing. 
> 
> Please do tell me if you would like to see this unfold, I am always very happy to hear from you guys!
> 
> A giant thank you to TB for beta'ing, I needed it and I am forever grateful!

 

**PART ONE: TESSA**

 

Contrary to popular belief, the key to making people believe a lie is not holding eye contact excessively or making sure your voice doesn’t waver so you sound very convincing. The key is to do it with a straight back and to nod or shake your head along to whatever it is you are trying to sell. It just has to be the appropriate movement for the lie you are telling. Like, you shake your head when you say: “No, it’s not like that between my best friend Scott and I, we’re not a couple, have never been, that would be gross.” And you nod your head when you say: “Oh, I am totally happy for my best friend Scott and his new girlfriend, they’re totally perfect together!”

 

Tessa Virtue is a pretty good liar. At least Scott has never figured out that she has been on and off in love with him since she was seven and he was nine. Well, if anything, she is pretty sure that he never did. _If_ he did, he never let it on or maybe he never wanted to know for sure. Because the truth is, their friendship is the bomb. It’s the best thing, the number one relationship in her life, which is saying a lot because her mother and sister are quite literally saints and she is very close to them too. But her and Scott, that’s been the pillar of her life so far, the one person she can always count on. Which is why whenever she has one of those stupid phases where she wants to kiss him all the time, it’s not good for her.

 

They just aren’t meant to be together. Because they’re too close, too familiar. And Scott doesn’t find her attractive. Or something. For whatever reason after his eleventh birthday, he hadn’t shown any romantic inclinations towards her at all anymore. Before his eleventh birthday however, they had been “dating”. Which was to say that her sister and his cousin had put them together and declared that they were boyfriend and girlfriend now. But to their surprise Tessa and Scott kind of went with it, they were the hot topic at skating camp that year, and ended up “dating” for eight months. Which is pretty much a lifetime for a kid of eight years, such as Tessa was. But in those eight months they probably said just about as many words to each other.

 

She had been such a shy kid and even more so with him, which was understandable, considering that she had a crush on him that surpassed the scope of what her child’s brain or heart could handle. Them dating consisted of him occasionally partnering her for ice dance lessons as she was trying it out and his original partner was in the hospital having her tonsils removed and then getting ice cream afterwards with their Mom’s in tow. They didn’t talk, they didn’t hold hands outside of the rink. They barely even looked at each other. But for eight months when she was eight, Tessa Virtue had a boyfriend and she saw him enough to make his skating partner really jealous. In fact jealous enough eventually to demand he “break up” with her because otherwise she would quit dancing with him. Back then, Scott had dreamed very fervently of going to the Olympics one day and so, at almost eleven, had prioritised his skating over having a girlfriend. So Tessa had to go.

 

In a weird turn of events, though, afterwards, they actually _did_ start talking to each other. Half a year later, they were thick as thieves and even when, at ten, Tessa got accepted into the National Ballet School and spent her school terms in Toronto, they kept in close touch and saw each other nearly every weekend at the rink in Ilderton, Scott’s hometown about a ten minute drive away from her house in London. Eventually (and not because of Tessa, mind you), his ice dancing partnership deteriorated when he was about fifteen and he never bothered to find a new one, instead he started to teach the beginners and after graduation became a full time coach. Meanwhile, Tessa did exceptionally well at ballet school and was hailed as the next big ballerina, all set for a meteoric rise to fame. She was poised to play Giselle at the National Ballet straight out of school (which _never_ happens!), when within the six weeks of rehearsals, her shins decided to get completely screwed up. She had tried to ignore that as hard as she could and only when she couldn’t dance from the pain for more than twenty seconds, did she agree to go to the doctors and see what was what.

 

Unfortunately nobody knew what to do with her and the burning pain in her shins and it took a month (and her opting out of Giselle with the heaviest heart) until a third opinion turned up—compartment syndrome, an overuse-injury of the muscle tissue. She had two options: quit ballet or get a surgery...and if she got surgery, that could either work or not with absolutely no guarantee that it would. But it still wasn’t a question for her. A week before her nineteenth birthday, she had that surgery, went in to let people poke holes into her legs and hoped for the best. She recovered at home for two months with mostly Scott for company and then went back to Toronto to find that the pain was still there whenever she tried to get on pointe. So at the ripe old age of nineteen years and two months, Tessa was a retired ballet dancer who couldn’t dance anymore and had no idea what to do with the rest of her life that suddenly seemed to stretch very empty for an unforeseeable amount of time.

 

She enrolled in college and studied psychology but her heart wasn’t in it. She tried other sports, golf and tennis but her heart wasn’t in that either. To earn some money, she worked at a Café but it never seemed to be enough to fully make ends meet. Needless to say her heart wasn’t in serving coffee and pastries _either._ She had been doing it for nearly four years anyway. She _has_ dreams, that’s not the problem. She wants to create things, so she tried her hand at jewelry and shoe design with the little talent for drawing that she possesses but the applications for the design schools all came back _no, sorry, apply again next year._ So that’s that. She tried creating cakes for the Café but it turns out she is a complete disaster in the kitchen, her killer poached eggs is about as far as she gets in the culinary arts.

 

Scott always says she would make a good choreographer but what use is her brain coming up with movement if she can’t do it, can’t teach it. Yeah, yeah, she knows that you  don’t necessarily need that in ballet because you can just shout out French words and the dancers will do exactly what you requested but maybe it still hurts too much, even if she could choreograph like that? Has he thought about that?

 

See, that’s the _one_ annoying thing about Scott. His damn optimism. For him the glass is always half full and even if it was empty, he’d still be happy to have the glass in the first place. He doesn’t accept her realism (which he stubbornly confuses with cynicism). He keeps saying to chin up and be happy but she doesn’t know what _makes_ her happy so she can’t as well just decide to _be_ it. What on earth would make her happy anyway? Except maybe getting to kiss him a lot but if that hasn’t happened in fifteen years, it’s probably not gonna happen anymore. Also it doesn’t matter now anyway.

 

She’s not in love with him at the moment and the last time she was was at twenty-two, so she thinks maybe that’s finally over. Maybe she can get on with her life and fall in love with someone else for a change. Not that she goes out looking for hopefuls. She’s really more of a homebody. Mostly because crowds exhaust her and after a day of Uni and then working at the Café, she just wants to curl up with her laptop or a book and recharge on her own. So partying is pretty much out for her and if she does happen to meet a guy, she could theoretically like, she gets clumsy and shy and that’s that.

 

All in all you could say that her life has been a bit of a mess. For years. Not that she can expect sympathy for it. Not from Scott anyway, who says stuff like ‘when life gives you lemons, ask for salt and tequila’ and not from Wendy, her rough-around-the-edges boss, founder and matron of _The Bag Lady Variety Café_. She just cares that the tables are set just so and that Tessa cleans the coffee machine at the end of the late shift.

 

The end of that today is also still way too far off, by the way. When Tessa goes to wipe the corner table down for the third time in a two hours, her back feels sore enough to ask to have it exchanged for a new one and because they only have two tables occupied at the moment, Tessa allows herself a brief coffee break, crossing the little floor to the counter and going for the Flat White that is her current favourite.

 

She catches her reflection in the chrome of the coffee machine. Her freckles peak back at her through the powder she’d applied on her pale skin before heading out to her classes in the morning and her dyed raven-black hair is falling messily from her top-knot, unable for her to rein in even if she wanted to with how frizzy it is from the humidity (which is ridiculous for late April quite frankly). She blinks her seaweed-green eyes at herself and breathes as the machine gurgles, filling the air with the scent of ground coffee beans and waits.

 

These days it seems waiting is all she does. But unlike the purpose of her life, the coffee actually does present itself after half a minute and she drinks it as fast as its temperature allows. It’s like life is being breathed into her again, even if it’s artificial life. She’s not overly picky. She glances over at the guests, a young family at one table and two giggling high school girls at the other, bent over their phones.

 

The afternoon sun catches in their glossy hair and Tessa wonders why she is still self-conscious looking at girls like that, like the cool and the pretty ones that would slow-mo down the halls at ballet school in Toronto, like the ones that Scott would take to his semi-formals in London. The ones that she couldn’t fit in with anywhere no matter how hard she tried, because she had been scrawny and flat-chested, with an unevenly pitched girlish voice, a crooked nose, mousey hair and a shyness that had made her awkward and twitchy all her life. She was better now though. She’d bought herself push-up bras and got muscles where before she’d been skinny, she fixed the nose and the hair and about the time when Scott’s voice dropped (when he was about twenty), hers got lower too. And she’s not so shy anymore, instead she has embraced that she is slightly awkward but sweet in nature and that she can put people at ease. She has learned to use that to her advantage, made real friends and got much better at liking herself. She’s really quite okay with herself as it is, honest.

 

She is in a pretty okay place personality-wise. Now if only the rest of her life would get the memo to get to that good place too, she’d like that very much. There’s just not really any indication that it will and she has no idea where to start. Obviously, if she knew she’d be getting a sign from somewhere, she’d be on the lookout for it but for now all she sees is…Scott.

 

Her best friend is walking up to the front door, peeking through the glass in the frame and knocks and waves at her, his expression a question. _Can you come out here for a sec?_ It looks urgent. Tessa puts her mug down and glances over her shoulder into the hall, her boss is in the office, tapping away on her computer loud enough for the clicking sounds to echo into the room. But the guests are content, so Tessa deems it fine to step out for a moment and see what Scott needs from her. He has thrown his bike onto the curb which tells her he rode his bike from the apartment building they share a mere seven minutes ride away. She wonders what is so pressing that he had to come by in person instead of just text.

 

When she steps outside to meet him, she’s hit with cool, damp air and she instantly misses the jacket she left inside. Scott’s embrace provides a quick reprieve but doesn’t last too long and unfortunately, doesn't age well. Meanwhile he just looks like he’s a life wire, too much on edge to feel any discomfort by the nasty, foggy weather.

“Hey, Kiddo,” he smiles and grins down at her, his dark, short hair disheveled and spikey, a little shuffled together like his features are (the big hazel eyes and that straight pointy nose over a sharp angled jaw) and very handsome. Unfairly so, what with how she is pretty sure she looks like a wet dog by now.

 

“What is it?” She asks him, wanting to speed this along so she can get back inside. “Everybody okay at home?”

“Sure,” he says. “Everyone’s fine. It’s nothing bad. You know, I’d have called but this is kind of huge so I wanted to tell you in person.”

Tessa feels her features slip as for the first few irrational seconds, she fears that he’s come to tell her he’s getting married; he looks _that_ joyously expectant. But _of course_ he’s not getting married. Who would he marry?! He just broke up with Jessica (again) and he wouldn’t...not that he hadn’t gone back to her time after time but he surely wouldn’t decide to marry her five weeks after she cheated on him with her ex. He just wouldn’t, right? Right?

 

“Patrick called,” Scott starts and doesn’t seem to notice her instant unease. “His friend Erica is producing this TV show and we’d be the perfect contenders.”

It takes a second for that sentence to make sense to Tessa, mostly because she has to breathe through the sigh of relief that “Jess and I are getting married” and/or “...having a baby” wasn’t what just left his lips.

 

“What?” She asks when she finds she is failing to comprehend exactly what he is trying to tell her regardless of her relief.

“Patrick’s friend Erica works as a producer for this show,” Scott repeats, talking slow as if she was an idiot. “It’s like a competition show, sort of, and Patrick told her about us when they spoke about it and she says we should audition for it.”

“We?” She peaks up at him.

“It’s for a couple,” he shrugs and she tilts her head at him.

“...Of friends?” She finishes his sentence, attempting to have him clarify with her toes tingling. “Scott, what are you talking about? What would we be doing in a TV show?”

 

“Okay, it’s a bit complicated to explain,” he says. “It’s called _What’s Love_ or something and it’s like a couple’s competition show? See, basically, there’s these six couples and they go to a villa on an island for a month and every week one couple gets voted off. But get this, one of the couples is _fake..._ And that would be us!” He adds that last thing as if this should have garnered a bigger reaction from her.

He looks like an excited puppy dog and Tessa has no idea what he’s saying. “Fake _what_?”

 

“Tess, don’t be so thick,” he rolls his eyes. “That’s the point of the show. The real couples have to find out the fake couple. Wait, here, Patrick sent me their casting call.”

He clamours for his phone from his jacket pocket and finally holds it out to her after some thumbing around on it. There’s a slickly designed admat for CTV on it, a wall of text over a picture of a luxurious villa and some roses photoshopped on the side and a logo that says “ _What’s LOVE Got To Do With It?!_ ”. The top paragraph has about the same things in it that Scott has just told her: Six couples on an island, one among them only pretending to be one which either gets found out—or wins the competition.

 

“To help the process of elimination,” it reads below, “the couples have one challenge each week to prove that their love is real and then a vote is held in which one couple at a time is voted out by the other couples in the house. When only two couples remain, the grand final live show is held in Toronto where through a round of games, the audience finally decides in a televote which couple is the realest in love. The winning couple earns itself a prize of 500,000 dollars. It is of course highly possible that in the end there are two real couples left standing.”

 

Scott wobbles with his hand, attempting to pull his phone away and Tessa yelps, catching his wrist. “I’m not done.”

“Then read faster,” he complains. “My arm is getting tired.”

“Don’t be such a baby,” she huffs, rolling her eyes.

 

“If, however the fake couple is among the two last finishing teams, they stand to gain,” she reads on. “If they are chosen by the viewers as the “real” and winning couple, they win an additional 500,000 dollars. If a real couple wins, they win an additional luxe round trip around the world AND all the other real couples get an additional 100.000 dollars, making it a big incentive for all real couples to figure out the fake one. The competing couples are forbidden to speak about their actual couple status until after the final vote when the truth will be revealed.”

 

Tessa looks at the phone and then up at Scott, back at the phone, doing the math, and then back up to Scott. “So the winning couple gets 500,000 dollars?” He nods. “And if the fake couple wins they get another 500,000 dollars?” He nods again, grinning widely. “That’s a million dollars!”

“500,000 for each of us,” he says excitedly. “If we won.”

 

For a moment, Tessa is pretty busy trying to wrap her mind around the possibility of her having 500,000 dollars at her disposal and how exactly that would save her ass in more than one way. Because the thing is, she is so deep in debt, she doesn’t know if she can ever pick up enough shifts at the Café to pay it back. Suddenly having 500,000 dollars to spare would solve pretty much 90% of her problems. The other 10% are standing before her, studying her reaction and will probably not be helped by winning a game show. If she had all that money though, she could at least pay off her student loan, get her broken couch fixed (or maybe even buy a new one!) and get rid of the astronomical debt racked up by the treatment costs from after her leg surgery and her nose job.

 

Yes, true, she got a nose-job at nineteen. So what? And yeah, maybe she jumped the gun on it a little bit. But that wasn’t her fault, she couldn’t have known it when she made the decision. Because she got it done before rehearsals on Giselle started, thinking that by the time the curtain went up on her first lead part in the National Ballet, she did not want her old crooked nose on any of the pictures that she would certainly treasure forever. So she had went to the bank to get a loan for the surgery, not knowing that a few short months later there would be another one. That one would be covered by her insurance. But it would still cost her her career.

 

The physio after, trying to salvage what was eventually unsalvageable, cost about as much as her nose. Which she then could not pay for anymore, being let go off her contract upon retirement. So since nineteen, Tessa had been carrying a price-tag of roughly 20.000 dollars in debt from the legs and the nose, add that to the student debt of another 20.000 she will be looking at by the time she gets her bachelor’s degree _and_ add to that the credit card debt of about 10.000 dollars she had to make just to be able to buy books and furniture and _food_ and pay rent every month.

 

Damn, half a million would sure go a very long way to help make all of that better. Looking at Scott look at her, she can tell he has followed her thought process exactly. Probably because he is right with her. Six months ago, he’d sunken all his savings as well as a giant loan into a house outside of Ilderton that he wanted to remodel himself with the help of his brothers. In a ‘twist’ that shocked absolutely no one, he had miscalculated the work and cost of that project so severely that his grandkids will probably still be paying the mortgage if he doesn’t come into some money soon.

 

Which is probably why he looks at her like he’s already hit the lotto jackpot when he finally snags his phone back and tilts his head at her expectantly.

“It’s a lot of money,” he says, needlessly. It’s true. But…

“But,” she voices, “the show...if we pretended...I mean we would have to act like…” Suddenly her throat is very, very dry and it’s a bit hard to look at him anymore so she drops her gaze to the corner of the street that the Café sits on, watching an old red truck rumble by. “Like we’re a _couple._ ” And that can’t be a good idea.

 

“So?” Scott asks her like it’s no big deal at all.

“Well, we’d have to, like, _kiss_ and everything,” she mutters in the general direction of the bushes in front of the Café’s brick walls.

“I’m not gonna give you cooties, geez, Tess,” Scott scoffs and chuckles. “It’s half a million dollars. We can make out a little for that.”

 

“Don’t be an asshole,” she says and snaps her head back up to look straight at him, he looks back at her a little funny, like she has something on her face. “I mean it’s weird, right? It would be so weird for us to do that.” She wipes at the skin under both her eyes, hoping to maybe catch whatever mascara clumps have fallen on there to make him look at her like that. “We’ve been best friends for seventeen years...it would be totally awkward.” (That's not the reason it would be awkward, but she doesn't need to tell him that.)

 

“It’s so much money, T,” he says, the use of his favourite (because shortest) nickname for her is unsettling her a little at this very moment for reasons she can’t really place. “And we could pull it off, you know we could. Patrick suggested us to Erica because of our, like, _backstory._ You said it, best friends for seventeen years. They can sell that...hell, we even live in the same building. It’s the perfect cover. Nobody will know that we’re not really together.”

 

“People here know,” Tessa deadpans, gesturing around vaguely.

“Yeah, and it’s _our_ community, Tess,” he reminds her. “They’ll support their own. They’ll lie for us. Honestly, I can call a town hall meeting in Ilderton tomorrow and you’ll bet we’ll have at least forty people swearing up and down the block that we’ve been together since eight and ten if anybody comes asking. We can _do_ it, T.”

 

She chews on her bottom lip, feeling her belly rumble. This is insane. It’s insane. There’s no way they could do that, could they? But the money...that would be really good. ( _And the getting to kiss Scott might be nice too_ , she thinks unbidden, chastising her brain. _NO, you are not going there again_ , she warns herself fiercely. _Don’t you_ dare _go there again._ ) It’s stupid, they shouldn't do it, honestly, and it’ll likely end badly. And they might not even win!

 

“Half a million dollars,” Scott repeats, his voice low and then he catches her hand in his, recapturing her gaze and he knows what he’s doing when he arches up his eyebrows, looking _oh so charming_ and _oh so pleading_. Exactly like he had at twelve and fourteen, and whenever else he wanted her to do something silly like break into the Al’s old barn or sneak beers into the Carnival, and she could never say no to him. “Think about it, okay? At least think about it.”

“I will,” she says and judging from his smug, triumphant expression, it’s enough.

“Awesome,” he grins and she feels like he already knows she’s going to say yes.

 

Which she does. That night. After he left her to drive out to his buddies in Ilderton and she got home tired to the bone but with her brain in overdrive. She flip flopped the entire way home, weighing off the good and the bad and sadly can’t get past the obscene amount of money they could get out of it. (Everybody has a price, huh? Apparently hers is 500,000 dollars…)

 

And so in the end she texts him “I’m in” and then waits for his reply. He calls her three minutes later.

“Seriously?” His voice blares from her speaker, catching and tumbling over itself, and she thinks he might be out in the field with his buddies, shooting stuff by the ambient sounds of it. “We’re gonna do it?”

“We’ll do it,” she confirms. “But if we do it, we do it to win, okay? We’re gonna sell it. We’re gonna be the best fake couple the world has ever seen!”

“Absolutely,” Scott says and she can hear him grin over the phone. “I mean, we obviously gotta audition for it first...but we’ll get it.”

 

“What do you mean, audition?” Tessa asks, sitting down on her bed, half an hour away from him in her apartment near Anne Street Park in the city.

“Well, we gotta drive out to Toronto and meet the TV people so they can decide if they want us for it,” Scott replies.

“Oh,” she mumbles. “That’s...do we need to pretend there already?”

“I don’t know, T,” Scott says. “I don’t think so. I mean, they know we’re not really together. That’s kind of the point. We’ll be fine. I’ll just tell Patrick to tell Erica we’re in and then it’ll all be fine. We’re gonna be killing that fake love thing. It’s gonna ruin _real_ love for everyone else.”

 

Tessa laughs at his joke. It sounds hollow to her ears but she knows it won’t carry through the speakers.

 

“You want to do what now with Scott?!” Her sister asks the next day when she skypes her from outside the library on campus and then Tessa has to explain the plan to her again in detail. Jordan sits in her the  lawyer’s office in downtown Toronto where she’s interning, a picture of grace and poise, on which Tessa can find her own scepticism etched on her sister’s similar features (except that Jordan had gotten the right sized kind of nose from birth and had always been better looking, her bone structure just that more graceful and symmetrical, her lips plumber and eyes brighter, blue and freckled where Tessa’s were a muddy, dull green most of the time).

 

“So Scott got a call this morning that they want us to drive up tomorrow and interview for the spot on the show,” she closes and Jordan takes a long moment to even answer, her face impassive.

“What did Mom have to say about this?” Her sister asks eventually.

“I didn’t tell her,” Tessa shrugs. “What? I’m gonna tell her if we get it. No need to wind her up now.”

“She’s not gonna be happy about you lying for money on national television,” her sister says.

“Sounds like you’re not too happy about it either,” Tessa remarks primly, raising an eyebrow.

 

“Look, you do you, okay? I’m not judging,” Jordan shrugs. “I didn’t think you’d be one for reality TV, private as you are, but I guess if you’re with Scott you’ll be fine. But, hun, it’s also _Scott._ What about that whole thing?”

“I don’t know,” Tessa says and realises in the same moment that Jordan’s eyes go big that she shouldn’t have been this honest. “I mean, I’m not into him or anything right now,” she says quickly. “I think I’m really past that now. For good, you know?”

Jordan merely cocks her head at her and lets her face do the talking, it basically spells ‘Yeah, right’ so she doesn’t have to put the words to it.

 

“Just be careful,” is what her sister says out loud, thoughtfully, and looks almost like she’s sorry. “Watch out for your heart.”

“I will,” Tessa promises. “It’s just...it’s so much money. I can pay for all the stuff that needs paying...I could even buy Mom’s house for her. So she doesn’t need money from Dad anymore and we can finally be done with all that.”

“Yeah,” Jordan nods. “I totally get it.” She pauses, considers her for a second as if she wants to say something else but then decides against it and asks her what she’s going to wear instead. Tessa realises with a start that she has no idea.

 

She still doesn’t know it when Scott knocks at her door early the next day, dressed in jeans under a grey old sweater, with a Blue Jays baseball cap on his head, and goes off about her still being in her pyjamas.

“I didn’t know what you’d wear,” she defends herself readily, stepping aside to let him into her studio apartment (it’s got an open kitchen, a couch and a queen sized bed, a cupboard that holds both her non-perishables and her clothes and a little balcony that she barely ever uses. Scott’s apartment two floors down has exactly the same floor plan but way more _stuff_ scattered around in it).

“Why does it matter what I’m wearing?” He asks her and helps himself to a pot of her coffee without asking, since he goes in and out of her place as if it was his own and vice versa.

“Because we need to match,” she tells him, studying the exact shade of the grey of his sweater and opens her cupboard door, skimming her wardrobe. “So we look more together.”

 

She deliberates for a moment and then picks her favourite blue jeans that match the colour of his just enough and a blouse with grey pinstripes and then chooses a navy cardigan to go on top that is vagule the shade of his baseball cap. She leaves him to plunder the little contents of her fridge while gets dressed and puts some mascara and lip gloss on. When she gets back he gives her a curt once over and nods appreciatively.

“Looking good,” he says and then grabs her purse from the countertop to toss it at her with no further pretense of sweetness. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

 

As they should. They’re hitting the early commute traffic on the way out of the city and take twenty minutes longer than usual to get on the highway to Toronto. Once they get properly driving, they spend the first hour of the way talking about everything and nothing while Tessa gets more nervous by the minute. Once the road signs read “Toronto—20 kilometers”, she is fidgety and shallow of breath and hasn’t listened to him monologuing about the synchro skaters he helps coach and how their teenage in-fighting is driving him nuts in long enough for him to get prissy about it.

 

“T, you’re not paying any attention at all,” he complains.

“I’m sorry, I’m just nervous,” she apologises.

“What for?” He asks.

“Well, because,” she groans, “I don’t know what to do in there. I hate auditions.”

“Just be yourself,” he offers lamely, and sounds like he wants to add a ‘duh’.

“So, a failed ballerina with nothing to show for in her life?” She challenges and he groans.

“Come on, kiddo,” he says and reaches over the console to put his hand on her thigh. “You got so much going for you, don’t talk down to yourself.”

 

This isn’t new, the touching her, he’s always been tactile. But in the context of what they’re setting out to do right now, it kind of makes her jumpy. He straight up laughs at her, that voice that only barely broke like two minutes ago, rasping a low chuckle.

“You’re gonna have to get a little more used to me touching you,” he says.

“I know,” she sighs and tries to ignore the heat spreading from his palm on her down into her toes. “But it’s weird.” It’s _so_ weird.

 

“It’s only weird if we make it weird,” he shrugs and leaves his hand where it is for another long minute. “We know each other, we know why we’re doing it and it’ll be just fine.”

She nods, breathes and turns up the radio so they can sing along to it for a while and she tries to pretend they’re just driving out to the rink so he can laugh at her ballet dancer way of trying to ice skate on the odd time they still get on the ice together. Instead of driving to meet some people who will decide if they can make heart eyes at each other wild enough to fool people into thinking they’re in love with each other.

 

They get in to the production company offices in downtown with exactly five minutes to spare. Which is not enough time for Tessa to go into full panic mode before the meeting and thank God for that. Scott is right beside her, bubbling with excitement in the face of this new adventure and she wishes she could have just half of that ease. He takes her hand and squeezes once before letting go again when a blonde bob’ed, hourglass-shaped woman in a smart floral dress rounds the corner to them and holds out her hand.

 

“Tessa and Scott?” She asks on a toothpaste-commercial-white grin and near well crushes Tessa’s hand when she nods. Scott winces when she shakes hands with him and Tessa can’t help but stifle a laugh which is all nerves and very little actual humour.

“I’m Erica, we spoke on the phone,” the woman says to Scott. “Did you find us okay?”

“Just got a _little_ lost,” he quips and she laughs easily and then touches Tessa by the arm to nudge her towards a hallway behind them leading out of the lobby into the offices.

 

The space is air-conditioned and smells like dust and old paper but nobody seems to mind, they all just flit through the sleekly decorated glass-steel building looking fabulous and important. Tessa in her blouse and cardigan feels suddenly frumpy and small-townish in comparison.

 

She doesn’t have much time to ponder though how she already regressed way back to Tess-from-next-door after her short stint of living in Toronto only a few short years ago, because Erica then leads them into another light-flooded space. They’re entering a relatively spacious conference room that has two chairs set up on the middle in front of a panel of tables with a camera on a tripod on it. So this must be the room where it happens.

 

“So, we’re just going to have a conversation and take some pictures,” Erica tells them when she sees Tessa eye the set-up cautiously. “Nothing to be nervous about.”

“Is it that obvious?” Tessa half-laughs very nervously indeed.

“I’ve been doing this a long time, I know my jumpy auditionees when I see them,” Erica says in the cadence of an old, benevolent aunt. “But it’s really nothing to worry about. It’ll just be me and our coordinator Luke and you’ll just be answering some questions so we can get to know you guys.”

 

“I’m here!” A dark-skinned man in his mid-forties with a kind smile and salt-and-pepper beard sticks his head into the door and then waltzes in. “I’m Luke, nice to meet you.” He shakes Tessa’s hand first and then Scott’s and she knows instantly who he’s more interested in among the two of them. He gestures at the chairs and Scott nods, bullying Tessa along, touching his hand to the small of her back to get her to sit down on his right. Like they’re driving and he’s at the wheel (like he should be because she is so tense, she doesn’t think she remembers how speaking works).

 

“So, why don’t you tell us about yourselves?” Erica starts when their butts have barely hit their destinations, not losing any time as Luke turns on the camera and trains it firmly on the two of them, fiddling with the zoom. “What’s your story, individually and together?”

“Guess I’ll start, eh?” Scott says and her eyes flit to his to nod at him in an equal mix of gratitude and encouragement. “Okay, so I’m Scott Moir, I’m twenty-five. I’m from Ilderton, Ontario and I’m a figure skating coach at my Mom’s rink and a volunteer firefighter and...I like country music and...um, yeah, I guess that’s about it.”

Tessa grins at him, supportive and a little proud, even if all he did was introduce himself but it’s still enough to make her forget briefly that she has to do the same and only remembers when he pulls a face at her.

 

“Oh, uh, I’m Tessa Virtue,” she blurts once she knows what he’s trying to tell her and snaps back around to the other people in the room. “I’m twenty-three, turning twenty-four in May, born and raised in London, Ontario. I went to the National Ballet school here in Toronto but then had to quit dancing after I graduated because of an injury and now I’m getting my BA in Psychology in London and work at a Café to pay the bills.”

 

“And her favourite music is everything that eighty year olds like,” Scott supplies, like he was bound to, since he has this really odd love-hate relationship with her musical tastes.

“I like oldies,” she shrugs, nonplussed and unabashed, because she has decided ages ago that she wouldn’t let his frequently uttered distaste of her passion for _Hall &Oates _ mess with her mood. “And fashion and art. And sports.”

“And chocolate,” Scott adds.

“Yeah, that too,” Tessa confirms. She would be shamefully remiss to leave chocolate out of that list, it’s true.

 

“And your story together?” Luke asks from his seat right of Erica, leaning leisurely against the wall and scribbles something on a  notepad before looking at Scott. “Your friendship?”

“Okay, so, we met as kids and her sister and my cousin thought it would be funny if we were dating,” Scott rattles off and that’s the first time Tessa realises how many times she has heard him tell that story now. Because they went to so many things together that whenever they met new people, he liked to tell them about how long they knew each other. Always with that cute little proud tint to his voice. She kind of likes it. A lot.

 

“So we did that for a while when I was ten and then I broke up with her,” he continues, “and after that we actually started talking to each other and became friends. And stayed friends. But before she moved back home after school, we only saw one another on the weekends. Now, it’s all the time, though. We live in the same building. And she’s my best friend,” he closes and pats her thigh, grinning over at her appreciatively. “I tell her absolutely everything.”

 

“I always have to make sure he doesn’t blow it with his girlfriends,” Tessa adds although she is not exactly sure why she felt compelled to.

“Woah, you make it sound like I have a harem or something,” Scott nags instantly and sounds almost embarrassed when he turns back to the TV people. “There’s been like three. At separate times, mind you.”

“Four,” Tessa corrects.

“Whatever,” he huffs. “There’s _nobody_ now.”

 

“So you care deeply about each other?” Erica asks into their air of slight bickering and thankfully pulls them back on track.

“Absolutely,” Scott affirms.

“But you never wanted to try and date?” Erica follows-up.

“No,” he sounds certain as death itself and Tessa sets her jaw into a bright, deliberate smile. “Not after eight and ten.”

“May I ask why?” Luke pipes from the side.

“It would be too weird,” Tessa says and hopes she doesn’t sound too much like she’s talking through gritted teeth. Do they have to talk about _this_ right now? Is that really necessary?

 

“Yeah, probably,” Scott agrees beside her. “We know each other so well, we’re just too close for that. I don’t...I’m kind of a crappy boyfriend and she deserves so much better than me, so...I guess we just wouldn’t want to risk losing what we have for something else that might not work out, right?” He looks over at her, his eyes burning into the side of her skull enough to make her look at him and nod. He says that like it’s true, when really he just finds her not-pretty and doesn’t want her plain and simple. But whatever, this is the official version, so she sticks with it.

 

“Yeah, no,” she says to him and then to Erica and Luke: “And I’m not his type either, so.”

“That’s not…,” she thinks she hears Scott mutter but the only thing she can really make out is: “Nevermind.”

“Hm?” He’s got her full attention again now.

“No, go on, nevermind, T,” he says, shaking his head. “Forget about it.”

 

“Anyway, no,” she says, reluctantly doing him the favour of not trying to find out if he said what she thinks she heard. Ever the steadfast friend that she is, after all. “We never wanted to, we’re not going to. It’s not like that with us, we’re really just friends.”

“Besties forever,” Scott says and sounds like a little girl which she is not all the way sure is deliberate. And then he buffs her in the shoulder with his fist and she tries to control her features so that she doesn’t give him her signature ‘What the hell are you doing?’-Look (that one is very particular, and frequent, to her reactions to him).

 

“Okay, but if you want to be a part of our show,” Erika interjects, “you’re going to have to seem like a real couple if you want to win, do you think you can do that?”

“Definitely,” Scott jumps in.

“Mmh-mhm,” is all Tessa can say to that at the moment.

“Would you mind showing us a little bit?” Luke asks evenly and puts another note on his pad. (What is he writing on there anyway? Is this a test?!)

“Pardon?” Scott says it but Tessa thinks it loud enough to be audible too, she thinks.

“Like how you would act?” Luke clarifies. “If you were trying to sell that you were a real couple?”

 

Scott clears his throat and shifts in his seat and the energy in the room changes immediately because it changes in _him_.

 

She can feel it and see it when he turns to her, beckoning her to do the same. It’s instantly awkward because she can see him try to act a certain way, look at her a certain way and it’s not a new look, either. She has seen this a million times over: At the end of long parties in his small town, walking down abandoned streets with him, carrying her heels, on her way to crash in one of his brother’s old bedrooms. At that one semi-formal he brought her to because they didn’t have those at the National Ballet School, when he slow-danced with her and spun her out and turned her in like she was suddenly new. At his brother Charlie’s wedding where she read a poem to the congregation. And sometimes just on a random Tuesday when for some reason, he looks at her like _that_ , like maybe there’s more.

 

It startles her to learn that apparently he can do this at the tip of a hat. That he can just generate this... _heat_ with her, for lack of a better term, just because somebody told him to. Which makes her wonder if it was ever real before at all. But that thought makes her feel to mortified and stupid to linger on.

 

And then Scott is already busy rocking his chair towards her in one clunky motion and puts his arm around her shoulder, dipping his forehead slightly against her head, close enough to feel his breath graze the shell of her ear and hear it rattle through his windpipe, right to the point where she would maybe be unable to halp shivering but then he deems the performance done and disentangles himself to her, shifts on his seat and turns back around to the camera. For a second Tessa thinks he might ask Erica for a cookie.

 

“Sorry for being blunt but could you kiss each other?” Is what Erica gives him for his troubles. Not a cookie by any stretch of the imagination. “It’s just so we have it on camera for evaluation purposes later. So we can see your chemistry...because we had people in here that looked like they were kissing their siblings and that doesn’t make for great television.”

 

“Um,” Tessa starts, poised to politely decline, feeling her body flush up and instantly drenched in cold sweat and humiliation. _No, no, no, no. Why?!_

“Yeah, yeah, sure,” Scott says and hits his knee against hers with little subtlety. “Of course.”

“I don’t…,” she mutters forlornly.

“Come on, T,” he hisses under his breath, not missing a beat.

“Have you ever kissed each other before?” Erica asks, ignoring whatever it is that Tessa and Scott are doing right now. (God knows Tessa has no idea what it is.)

 

“Totally, she was my first kiss,” Scott offers up easily while Tessa hopes to die or maybe just dissolve into air. “When I was ten. Gave her flowers and everything.”

“I would have gotten the flowers anyway,” she corrects through the lump in her throat. “You just stole them from the bucket to give them to me.”

“I didn’t have an allowance, what was I supposed to do?” Scott yelps mock-defensively. “The kiss was all mine.”

“Lucky that kisses are free,” she half-scoffs and then adds: “We also kissed after, once.”

“We did?” Scott asks and looks at her.

“At Adam’s house at spin the bottle?” She stares at him. He’s not honestly forgotten, has he?! “I was fourteen?”

“Oh, yeah,” he says. “Right, I remember.”

 

She’s not sure he does and incredibly hurt all at once that he might doesn’t. Because that would mean it meant less than nothing to him, too distracted by Jessica, who’d been at that party too and who he was trying to get with...meanwhile tiny T-Virtch was probably just the sad little boarding school charity case who had no friends in Toronto and so she had to come with him to his High School parties. Wow. So that would be heavy. If he hadn't cared about it at all. Because it had meant literally _everything_ to her at the time. She had replayed that _one_ forced, stupid, wet and teeth-cluttering kiss a million times in her head over the next eight months that had followed it, hopelessly pining away from him like the last loser while he started sleeping with _Jessica_ and Tessa wanted to pretty much die every day of it.

 

“But not since,” she says to no one in particular and tries very hard to not look hurt.

“Well, would you then?” Erica asks again, now with an added edge of slight impatience and Scott taps her leg, making her lock eyes with him to see the urgency there.

 

 _We gotta,_ they say. And that might very well be true. She still doesn’t want to, especially not now and not on camera and anyway...this is going terrible.

“We got this,” he mutters to her under her breath and snakes his hand up her arm until it lands on her neck lightly, leaving goosebumps in its wake she doesn’t appreciate much at the moment. “Just close your eyes and pretend it’s someone else.”

 

 _What if I don’t want it to be someone else?_ Her traitor brain blurts the moment he leans in.

 

“Close your eyes, T,” he whispers again and the last thing she sees before she does, entranced by the breathy rumble of his voice, is that slight smile on his face. The one that makes her toes curl no matter how over him she thinks she is.

 

She still feels that smug little arch of his lips when they slot over hers softly, pecking once, pressing down next and then she gasps beside herself when she feels his tongue sweep over her upper lip. On the exhale, her mouth falls open for him and he goes in, working his hand into her hair to navigate her by the back of her head, pulling her against him as he deepens the kiss and she is left helpless in the motion, in the flow of it. It sets her skin alight, making her feel this weird ache, a sort of craving for him she had only imagined to ever be met like this but instead of dulling it or sating it, it's only getting worse. She doesn’t really feel anything but shock and a kind of static current race through her, can’t really decipher what he does or if she likes it, doesn’t know if it’s any different then it was at fourteen or the same or anything at all really, only that it’s _happening._

 

Until it’s not and he leans out and her eyes fly open to see him hovering close, licking his lips and staring at hers for a split second before he looks at her eyes again, the hazel darkened to a soft brown and unreadable. He leans further out, clears his throat and won’t look away until she does.

 

“Awesome,” Erica says, seconds or eons later and Tessa could swear she sounds a smidge breathless too. The only thing Tessa knows for sure though, is that she has aged 87 years in the last couple moments and that she would like to leave now, _please._

“Thank you guys,” Erica says, heeding her unspoken plea. “Now we’re just going to snap some pictures of you guys and there are some forms to fill out and then we’ll got you on your way.”

 

All of that happens in a haze for Tessa, the pictures getting taken, her tucked against Scott’s side who touches her like she might break in his arms and is suddenly way less chipper than before. She gets her Mom’s phone number wrong three times on the sheet where she’s supposed to put her emergency contract and is beet red about it by the time she finally writes it down correctly under Scott’s inquisitive side glances.

 

 _Don’t look at me,_ she thinks, feeling the tips of her ears pulse red hot.

 

“When will you be able to tell us if we’re in?” Scott asks, minutes later when Tessa has sort of noticed in the periphery of her mortification that they are being complimented out of the door and back into the lobby. They kissed. They _kissed_ and she’s pretty sure it was fantastic.

“Things should be moving fairly quickly now,” Erica tells them as they end up by the large entrance portal, the glass panes opening up the view to the bustling Toronto streets. “We’re going to be finalising the cast within the next two weeks and then the shoot starts in July, with four weeks on the Caymans and then two weeks off while the episodes air and then we finish in August with the live show. But Scott said you can both be available for that?”

 

“Yeah, no problem,” Tessa answers on autopilot, careful to remain eye-contact with the other woman and keep her voice level so the producer thinks that her opposite is not just spiralling to all hells. “I’ll just tell my boss at the Café and by July the semester is over, so it’s all good.”

“Yeah, my Mom is my boss, so I’ll be fine,” Scott jokes and at least he sounds like himself again.

“Awesome guys,” Luke says and politely shakes their hands again. “Thanks a lot for coming! You’ll hear from us with news soon.”

 

And with that they are back out on the street, walking back to his car in a weird state of strangeness and suspension, like they’re some different people wearing their bodies. They don’t talk until they’re inside and once they do, it’s just a brief acknowledgement of the fact that it likely didn’t go terrible, hopefully. That’s about it before Tessa tells him that she has to listen to a lecture on her iPod and does that...for two hours straight, staring at the road home flying by. This is so weird, it’s so, so, so, _so_ weird. And the weirdest thing of all is how her lips still feel like they’re all numb. As if she’s bitten into an electric fence.

 

When Tessa and Scott arrive in London, the precise moment that they awkwardly say goodbye at the driver’s door (with a very badly executed fist bump they have to try again to make work _twice_ ), a couple of hours further north, the video of them in the their audition is sent to the entire _What’s Love?_ -team.

 

The subject line reads “I think we found our fake couple” and the body: “Guys, that’s Tessa and Scott, we saw them today. We think they’re perfect for our fake couple. Young, attractive, free schedules for the shoot and just please check out that chemistry. Flipping off the charts! What do you think?”

 

Tessa and Scott don’t know about this, obviously. They just know that two weeks later, Scott gets a call, then calls Tessa and tells her on a nearly a Tarzan-yell that they’ve got it. That they’ve been chosen and that they are, as of April 28th, in the running for one _million_ dollars on _What’s LOVE Got To Do With It?!_

 

_Holy effin shit._

 

“I can’t believe we’re really gonna do it!” Scott wheezes into the phone and he sounds like he might start to cry soon. “It’s gonna be so great! We’re totally gonna win this! Aren’t you excited, T? It’s gonna be _so_ cool, right?”

“Yeah, totally!” She nearly screams, working her pitch up as high as she can without it sounding completely ridiculous. “So excited!”

 

It’s a really fortunate thing that Tessa Virtue is a pretty good liar. But probably the _actual_ fortunate thing is that Scott can’t see her shake her head over the phone.

 

And, _Jesus Christ_ , what has she gotten herself into?!


	2. Sweet Old-Fashioned Notion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the overwhelming support for the first chapter! I wrote like the wind because I was that inspired! (Comments are truly life and I am so grateful!)
> 
> Because a couple people asked: The TV show is not based on an actual format. A co-worker suggested a concept a little like this and I came up with my own version that then lend itself perfectly to TS and that's how this AU came about.
> 
> This chapter is unbeta'd and will of course be edited through the next couple of days, so until then I hope you ignore the mistakes I definitely made.

****Tessa is so over Scott. Honestly, she has been over him since before her birthday like ten months ago. Over his stupid face and his stupid hair and his stupid jokes and his whole stupid _everything._ He’s her best friend, sure. But that doesn’t mean she wants to _be_ with him. He’s way too headstrong, too impulsive, too stubbornly not into her. She doesn’t need this. She can do perfectly well without the butterflies and the pining and the thinking through every little thing he says or does, trying to give meaning to stuff that has less then none.

 

She’s been over him at nine, thirteen, sixteen, eighteen, twenty-one and now at twenty-three. A stupid, meaningless, forced kiss is not going to change that. Because he’s made his mind up about her at ten and twelve and fifteen and so on. The trend is ever so clear. And she refuses to play the broken hearted girl for the rest of her life. No, sir. No, thank you. She will finally pass the bechdel test in that continuous conversation in her own head. The time is now, the time for Tessa to get with Tessa. Playing his girlfriend for a month for the chance of getting some sweet hard cash is not gonna throw her back to feeling like she’ll forever be only half a person without having him love her.

 

She lies awake in her bed after he called her to tell her they made it onto the show and resolves with vervour to not fall back into the trite old patterns. And, okay, she’s thinking about it, fine. But it only just happened so she allows her the grace period of that night to stress out about it (to wonder if maybe now that he’s kissed her while they’re both semi-adults he might’ve finally figured out that everything he ever wanted had been right in front of his nose all this time, to question if the way his fingers curled against her scalp and he pulled her hair just a little as he worked his tongue around hers was for show or not, to ponder if she just signed her own death warrant by agreeing to do this competition with him and more of the same). But in the morning that will be over.

 

She’ll wake up a new person, unbreakable, untouchable. Focused and sharp with only one number one priority: herself. She’s decided that this is the only way she’ll get to the other side of _What’s Love Got To Do With It?!_ in one piece. God, she hates being so weak. She hates that she still cares. Scott is right, their relationship is too close anyway, they’re way too good friends. They would never work as boyfriend and girlfriend. He would get neglecting and she would get aloof, like they had in every outside relationship before. They would crash and burn and lose each other. She doesn’t want that. So it’s settled. Tessa is over Scott. For real this time.

 

The next time she sees him, two days later when he has asked about everyone from Ilderton he knows to meet them at the fire station, she forces herself to remember every time he has pissed her off. Every shallow thing he’s ever said, every time he farted in front of her and laughed at how funny _that_ was and by the time he gives her a quick hug hello, she doesn’t feel like kissing him ever again.

 

He dips his head towards her and asks about her day routinely. She answers perfunctory, about how her classes were tedious, gearing up for the end of term tests, and listens when he points out the new equipment they added to two of the three big fire trucks with the money from the last fundraiser fair (the one where she slaved away painting roughly 73 children’s faces as a favour to him). The old station is a little dank, paint peeling off of the walls and it smells like rubber and fuel, the odour so thick you can taste it. She knows he loves it here though, knows how much of his free time he spends lounging around with his brothers who are full-time firemen, not just volunteers like Scott, and waits for something to come up so he can help. Not that he wants anything to burn. But he’d been giddily happy the last time he got to drive out with his brother Charlie to go get a cat out of a tree.

 

Scott leaves her to stroll around and greet people as they arrive like he owns the place and she sighs, trailing after him eventually. She still isn’t sure that this was the right thing to do but he’s already called the meeting and so here they are. Tessa slips in behind him, so she can say hi to everyone getting in and in between hugging people, she keeps an eye out on the buffet table (which hosts mostly chips and beer) to see when she needs to go and refill. Twenty people in, she realises that Scott _literally_ invited everyone he knows. This is evident once she finds that she doesn’t know a good third of them, which is a thing that doesn’t happen much, her not knowing the people from his town, because usually, he introduces her to everybody and she is around a _lot._

“How many people did you invite?” She mutters under her breath as the plastic chairs he’s set up in rows in front of them fill one by one.

“Not many more,” he assures her.

 

By her estimate, by the time Scott looks poised to begin, there must be at least seventy people in the garage and it’s weirdly touching that he is so at home here, so entwined and loved by his community that he can call up an impromptu meeting on a days notice and so many will show up.

“That’s quite the turnout,” she mutters to him over her shoulder as he bullies her into position next to him in front of their audience.

“They’re all just here for the free booze,” he quips, grins at her and then turns to face the crowd.

 

“Hey guys, thank you all for coming!” He says and the room falls silent. “I bet you’re wondering why we asked you here today. Basically we wanted to throw you a little party as a bribe for helping us because we’re gonna be in this televised competition and when anybody comes asking, we basically need you to lie for us. But only a little bit.”

Tessa and Scott are now looking into puzzled faces and she can’t help but chuckle when he tries to clarify and summarize what they’re gonna be doing in the summer and fails for quite some time to explain the convoluted game and their parts in it.

 

Their expressions changing from confusion to sceptical understanding remind Tessa in striking detail to what their mothers looked like when they had sat them down at their semi-regular Friday Night BBQ in the Moir’s backyard the day before. Kate, Tessa’s Mom, and Alma and Joe, Scott’s parents, had waited a solid ten seconds after Scott had stopped speaking to react.

“Is this a good idea?” Joe went first.

“You’ll be lying on TV?” Alma joined in half a moment later.

“Won’t it make things awkward between you two?” Kate added to the cacophony of parental disapproval.

 

Tessa did not know the good answers for their questions but Scott has this talent of reframing anything so it sounds nice, which is why he offered: “It’s a great way for us to make some money to support ourselves and we’re not hurting anybody. We’re not lying to be malicious, we’re playing a game as teammates...as, like, you know, _business partners._ We’re gonna be working together as friends on a big project and it’s actually going to be awesome for our friendship when we win. ‘Cause we’re _gonna_ win.”

 

“...that’s why it would be amazing,” he says eventually after giving the fire station crowd about the same speech, “if you could tell people if anybody asks that you don’t know if we’re together or that we are, I mean that you _think_ we are or might be together. Whatever degree of fibbing is okay with you personally. Most important is to not tell the truth. So if anyone asks, we are not the fake couple, alright?”

 

Their audience nods but most eyes are still inquisitive slits. Which is why Scott asks if there are still questions on anybody’s mind he can put to rest.

“So, you’re really not together?” A guy with a trucker hat asks and looks almost grief-stricken. “I thought you finally figured it out now Jessica’s gone.”

There’s a rumble going through the room at the name of Scott’s ex-girlfriend that’s basically snickers of appraisal and Tessa is torn between feeling validated about this (because obviously nobody likes Jessica, as they should because she’s a stuck-up bitch, _pardon the language_ ) and doing a double-take over the fact that a random Ildertonian that she never knowingly met apparently kept tabs on Scott and her relationship status.

 

“No,” Scott says next to her. “There’s nothing to figure out people. We’re best friends, you know that. Ask Adam and the guys. They’d know,” Scott points at his middle school buddies at the far end of the crowd, already nursing their beer bottles, and they holler some ‘ _yeah_ ’s and nod emphatically.

“Never should’ve broken up with her, buddy,” his bulky, gym-crazy friend Adam jokes and the others around him laugh.

 

This is normal, ever since Tessa got her nose done and her boobs grew enough to fill her push-up bras, they haven’t let Scott live down the fact that a hundred years ago, he broke up with a skinny, mousy kid who wound up getting “hot”. Tessa grins, just because right now, she kind of enjoys the general mindset. _That’s right, Adam._ He never should have broken up with her because now she’s all over Scott and they’re —as Taylor Swift once sang— never ever, _ever_ getting back together. (Where’s the music anyway? The party should be getting started right about now...Tessa really doesn’t like the prospect of discussing whatever is going on between her and Scott with a town hall’s worth of people.)

 

“Yeah, greatest mistake of my life,” Scott jokes and she can see the way he rolls his eyes even from the corners of hers. “Anyway, no, we’re really not a couple. But we want to win this show, so we really need you guys to keep things tight here. That would be amazing. So...can we count on the home town closed ranks? Are you gonna help us win this?!”

And like in a made-for-TV-sports movie, the men and women gathered for their bullshitting-meeting yell back their affirmations, some even raising their fists, pumping them high and then Adam actually does start a chant.

 

“Scott and Tessa, Scott and Tessa, Scott. And. Tessa,” they proclaim until Scott screams from the top of his lungs that they’re very funny but that the ‘buffet’ is now officially open and that the celebration of his and her entry into the big fake love competition can begin. They mingle then, mostly apart from each other to cover their bases, answer more questions and hang with as many different people as they can, just to make sure that everybody actually likes them enough to keep their mouths shut and really, it’s no bother, anyway.

 

Tessa might not be the biggest people person but these guys and gals are pretty much her home community, too. Since she’s spent most of her weekends in Ilderton with Scott, she got essentially adopted into the small town’s fabric. She’s grown up in Scott and his friend’s backyards, got her first kiss at the Carnival (the real first kiss, not Scott pecking her on the edge of her mouth when he was ten), threw up from booze the first time in Kevin’s backyard, had her first time in Adam’s basement guest room with his cousin Collin who was visiting from Detroit and never called her after. This is her home, too and she has known most of these people since she was a little girl. Really, they’re fine. Her and Scott’s secret is definitely save with them. Hell, if they won, Tessa wouldn’t put it past them to throw them a parade or something.

 

Much later when Tessa has stalked off to sit with Julie, one of Scott’s core ‘gang members’, on the bed of one of the new SEMA trucks, her best friend finds her. His eyes are vaguely glazed over and there’s this swing to his step that tells her he’s tipsy and firmly on the verge of being _hammered._

“You girls hiding away again,” he says, mock-accusation lacing his words. “Everybody left, it’s a damn sausage fest over there. Come on, join the _fiesta._ ” He shimmies his hips a little bit and wobbles his head, over-exaggerating the Spanish word and holds out his hands to grab both women off their hiding spot. Tessa had just needed to get away from the crowd for a while earlier and she cringes at the thought of having to go back.

“It’s just the guys,” Scott tells her when he picks up on her reluctance. “Five people left, tops.”

 

Tessa watches as Julie follows the pull of Scott’s hand and hopps off the truck, the traitor. She’s lining up with Scott, coming up roughly to his shoulder, and looks at her expectantly. It’s funny seeing them next to each other, very aware that Scott likes standing by Julie a lot because she’s so short that she makes him look tall. But then again, she also makes him look lanky because she is about twice as wide as him. She’s slightly overweight in this well-proportioned Betty-Boop-way that makes her look wonderfully female and comely, with an inviting, friendly face. Like Tessa as a kid, she doesn’t exactly fit into the mold of what is supposed to be conventionally pretty, but _unlike_ Tessa, Julie has always been at home in her body and it made her breathtakingly, unconventionally beautiful, like she is glowing from inside. She’s been with her boyfriend Kyle since high school and she just told Tessa that they’re trying for a baby.

 

It’s remarkable what different lives two people the same age can be leading. Julie has her whole future mapped out. Is totally sure of herself and her place in the world, confident that the man she loves, loves her too. Enough to try and create a whole new human with him. Tessa doubts she will ever get to this place with anybody. _Who isn’t Scott_ , her asshole brain adds and she snuffs it out by jumping off the bed of the truck as well, forgoing Scott’s offered hand.

“I need more alcohol,” she declares and then makes a beeline for the camping table that holds just the few left-over beers now, the chips and dips already depleted.

 

At three in the morning, there’s six party guests left, sitting on the lawn chairs from the meeting in a circle around the fireman’s pole (because about an hour ago, the guys had a ridiculous pole-dance-off that made Tessa potentially pee her pants laughing a little bit). Julie sits on Kyle’s lap, Kevin and Adam flanking them, opposite of Tessa and Scott as they talk over Scott’s country playlist, looking like a group of hicks if she’s ever seen one. (Not that they are. They’re all not rich but Ilderton is hardly a trailer park, mind you.)

 

“I still can’t wrap my brain around you guys doing that show,” Julie muses and the others mumble their agreement.

“No one’s gonna believe you snagged _that_ ,” Kevin nods to Scott and then inclines his head towards Tessa. “You look like a stunted pelican next to her.”

“Gee, thanks man,” Scott laughs and takes a long drag from his beer (and even if he won’t show it, she knows that he is peeved, which is why he says what he says next). “Let’s not forget that Tessa here had a _preeeetty_ big crush on me way back when.”

 

“Scott,” Tessa hisses and plucks the hand off that he has slammed down on her thigh hard and continued to pat down on her, and tosses it back at him. Why would he mention that now?! And it’s not like she doesn’t know he knows, about 'way back when', but does that mean he knew about after, too? She’d always been sure he’d had no idea. No idea at all about thirteen, sixteen, eighteen and twenty-one. About last year. But maybe he’s known all along. And only pretended that he didn’t. Suddenly her ears burn and she feels stupid.

 

“That was a long time ago,” she says, measuring her own voice tightly and Scott laughs.

“I know, kiddo,” he says but then his hand is back on her knee, squeezing once and her stomach dips. She can’t help her head snapping over, facing him, locking on his gaze.

 

And yeah, it’s a _moment._

 

One of those that always get her all queasy. When he looks at her like he wants to say something he doesn’t have words for...as if the words do not exist yet and it’s so frigging confusing when that happens. She wonders who of them he’s protecting by not saying whatever it is he would maybe say. He retracts his hand and his eyes and the moment is gone, fleeting like a summer rain, leaving only the smell of water on hot concrete as the heat crawls back in slowly.

 

“Kev does have a point, though,” Adam says and buffs Scott in the arm. “You look like a damn peasant next to her.”

“Yeah, you need to take him shopping,” Julie agrees and points at Tessa. “Infuse some fashion sense into our Scotty from the heartland here.”

“Oh, she’s already locked that down,” Scott sighs. “On Wednesday she’s taking me to the mall.”

“Oh, please get me video of that,” Julia giggles. “I need a full teen-movie wardrobe-change-reel. Scott Moir’s _princess transformation_!”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Tessa promises. But when the day comes, she’s too busy keeping Scott’s puppy tendencies in rein to really think about documenting it all for prosperity.

 

On Wednesday afternoon, Scott is parading through _Forever 21_ with a weird hat and two sunglasses on that he stacked on top of each other, strutting his stuff like he’s an _America’s Next Topmodel_ hopeful. Tessa huffs out in exasperation and grabs him by the elbow to make him stop and wordlessly takes the hat and sunglasses off of him, trading them for a stack of shirts and pants as his face falls, like she is no fun at all. But he still follows her lead, letting her nudge him to the dressing rooms and obediently tries on all the combinations she points out to him. Three outfits in, he stands in front of the wall-length mirror, staring at his reflection wearing the baby blue dress shirt (with tiny white cactuses on it) and pressed navy pants she has picked out and looks like he has never seen the man standing in front of him.

“Is this really necessary?” he asks her, searching her eyes in the mirror where she stands beside him.

 

“It’s all in the packaging,” she shrugs matter-of-factly.

“Babe,” he says and she makes a face.

“What?”

“It’s all in the packaging, babe,” he repeats to her growing frown.

“We’re not acting yet,” she tells him, trying to ignore the way it feels like her chest is constricting at the pet name, coiling up into a ball, so it feels like her ribs are closing in around her heart. _Get it together, Virtue._

“But we should start getting used to it,” he says. “Serves us better in the long run.”

 

“I don’t even know if I would call you babe,” she tells him, fiddling with the next couple of outfits for him to try that she has thrown over her arm.

“If you would...when?” He asks her.

“If we were together,” she says, plucking off some lint off the uppermost T-shirt.

“Thought about that a lot, have you?” He chuckles and she knows he’s looking at her now, not her reflection.

“Shut up,” she groans. “Also yeah, of course I have. There’s a million dollars in the pot riding on me thinking a lot about it. About how we would act if we were...you know.”

“ _I’d_ call you babe,” he says easily, making her clench her jaw.

“Preferable over T-Dog,” she grits out and discovers a couple of manufacturing errors on that khaki shirt she’s giving most of her attention to as they speak.

“Maybe T-Babe?” Scott quips and instead of dignifying _that_ with a response, she shoves the new selection of menswear in his face, covering his smug grin from her sight.

“Go try those on,” she commands and he does her the favour.

 

And while he does, she picks up a couple things for herself she knows will go well with the colour scheme she’s assembled for him and then waits for him to model some of his new looks. She makes mental notes on which ones to buy that she can match easily with her new stuff and what’s already inside her overflowing closet.

 

“I look like the douchebags you date,” he says some time in that process when he called her into his cabin with him, refusing to come out in the violet polo she’s suggested.

“Excuse you?” She asks, peeking up at him. His skin has a bit of a yellow tint in the unflattering neon light. But he’s still handsome which is really annoying.

“Come on, don’t gimme that look,” he says, eyebrows rising towards his hairline making his forehead wrinkle deeply. “You know you have the shittiest taste in guys.”

“What are you talking about?” She asks testily.

 

“T, are you honestly trying to tell me that you’re not aware that all the guys you ever go on dates with are assholes?” He almost laughs like she’s so full of shit. “I think that’s gonna be the biggest doubt about us being a couple...the fact that you’re exclusively into douches and I’m a super stand-up guy.”

“Full of shit is what you are,” she mutters under her breath.

“Maybe I should be,” he muses, completely ignoring her. “Maybe I should be all like braggy and sexist.” And then he steps behind her and wraps his arms around her waist, pulling her in close against his front and locking his head over her shoulder. “Hey girl, bring that little ass over here, come sit on my lap and make me a sandwich.”

“How can I make you a sandwich if I’m sitting on your lap?” She asks, trying to wriggle free off his death grip. He’s not letting her.

“Mhm, baby, I think you’ll find a way, huh?” This, he positively drawls into her ear, making her squirm. “You’re a resourceful little doll.” And then his nose brushes the side of her jaw and she keeps her eyes from rolling into the back of her head by a hair. That damn _idiot._

 

“Get off me, ugh,” she growls, her throat all dried up and finally frees herself from him as he snickers. “That’s disgusting.”

“So you want less douche and more awesome Scott?” He asks and she glares at him over her shoulder.

“Well, do _you_ want me to be bitchy and psychotic like all _your_ exes?” She challenges and wants to piss him off a little bit in retaliation but instead he just laughs louder and gives her that ‘fair enough’ look.

“No. I want _that_ ,” he says and playfully prods his fingers into the angry crease between her eyebrows. “ _That’s_ fun.”

“You’re insufferable,” she tells him, not impressed. And then remembers to add: “Babe.”

 

That shuts him up for a moment. They’re facing each other now and he opens his mouth like a fish, only to close it again and swallows, licks his lips and nods.

“See,” he breathes after a long few seconds. “You’re making it work.”

She shakes her head at him and puffs out some air, ignoring how stuffy it suddenly gets in the little changing cubicle. “Try the checkered shirt with the blazer,” she instructs and then turns on her heels.

 

“Tess?” She hears after a while, when she’s already waiting outside in the light blue dress with clunky florals she’s picked out for herself that she likes quite a lot, actually.

“I’m here,” she says and then the curtain of his cabin is pulled aside and he stands before her looking like a proper adult, sharply dressed in a dark navy suit, a light blue checkered shirt and blazer on top. He steps up to her to regard them in their matching outfits in the mirror.

“Okay,” he says after a moment. “This looks…”

“Pretty good,” she finishes for him.

“Like we’re going to city hall to get legally married,” he nods, giving their reflections a thorough, kind of bewildered once-over. “I don’t think I’ve ever dressed this much like a contributing member of society.”

“It looks good,” she tells him, not really in the mood for his fishing for compliments right now.

“That’s what I’m saying. We can rock this. See?” He puts his arm around her waist, pulling her close to his side as if they were posing for a picture and she arranges herself around him, bringing her hand up to rest leisurely on his shoulder. “We look really _together._ ”

 

It’s weird how Tessa can see her own face fall, reading her own features spell out grave danger that she isn’t able to pull back. There’s fear in her eyes. Everything crashing down on her, all the years behind them casting their shadows over the months ahead. For the first time it properly hits her what they are going to do...act like a couple, touch and kiss like lovers for the benefit of a taxing audience. That they will have to be publically fake in love with each other while she could very likely be very much that in reality (and, who is she kidding, will be, probably within two days of the scheme because _fuck_ sense and sensibility and her own instinct for self-preservation, apparently). And then her eyes dart to his and she can see it. He _knows._

 

Fuck it all. He knows. And yeah, probably, he’s always known.

“Hm,” she hums, looking at the floor, preparing herself for the awkwardness, for him pulling away and getting all cagey and strange. But to her surprise, he pulls her closer and presses his head against hers to whisper.

“We’re gonna be okay, Tess,” he murmurs under his breath and then turns her easily, because she presently can’t offer up any resistance. He works her into his arms, so her head slots into his neck, pressed ear to cheek and feels him breathe in deeply against her frame. “I don’t want either of us to get hurt,” he whispers and she doesn’t feel tethered to her body anymore. There’s just his grip on her that holds her to the earth.

 

How did this get so real so fast? And also...is this some sort of acknowledgement of his own feelings in the matter? Does he _have_ feelings in the matter? What the hell does this _mean_?

 

“Me neither,” she says and it’s barely audible.

“So we’re gonna be smart, alright?” He rumbles, his bass making both their bodies vibrate where they’re lined up. “No stupid decisions.”

“Yeah,” she agrees automatically while her brain kicks into overdrive. What is he saying? That they would make ‘stupid decisions’ if they didn’t declare they shouldn’t just now? And what would those ‘stupid decisions’ entail? And is he worried that she’ll just jump him like a crazed maniac one of these days, unable to understand that he is _pretending_ to want her too for the sake of their success? Or that maybe...maybe he would potentially be, like, tempted to be stupid himself?

 

Instead of enlightening her on the matter, she feels him turn his head into hers and then his lips on her forehead. He’s kissing her. Okay. _Okay, no._

 

Like a shot, she punches her fists into his sides and pushes him away, taking a step back and won’t meet his eyes.

“I’m not in love with you,” she feels compelled to say, her voice wavering and aimed at the pile of his bunched up backpack on the floor by their feet. He pulls in a breath but she still can’t bare to look at him.

“I know,” he says, low and toneless.

“I’m not going to _fall_ in love with you either,” she goes on and feels her cheek burn. Ugh, this is terrible. How did this happen, again? How did they get here? And more importantly, how do they get _out_?!

“I know, T,” he says and she can hear the smile on his face when his hand lands on hers to cup her flaring red cheek. “I’m not worried.”

She nods, lingers for a bit with his palm on her skin and then steps away. “I’m gonna get changed. We should get going soon, your Mom is gonna kill you if you don’t fix the mailbox today.”

 

Once they are back in their civilian clothes, their little heart-to-heart already feels like it has happened to other people and when he drops her off at their apartment building, she even manages to look him in the eye as they part ways. They still don’t hang out again until Friday when they have to drive out to Toronto to get the promotion pictures and teaser shots taken for the show’s production. But that’s okay. She’s calmed down considerably by then.

 

On Thursday, she had taken measures to cleanse herself of her twitchiness and overall fretting. She’d paid extra hard attention in class, took extensive notes, worked a double shift at The Bag Lady and topped that off with an extravagantly long hot shower were she did not do any funny business with the shower head like she might usually would. Just so her thoughts wouldn’t drift to places they weren’t supposed to.

 

Instead, she used some sea salt peeling, rubbed herself down and studied her naked body for a while, smoothing her hands down her flat stomach and the belly ring she got after quitting Giselle and thus, quitting to be a perfect and pure little dancer. She thought that before they’d film her in a bikini on that island, she should be hitting the gym some more. She didn’t need to lose weight that much because she’d always been naturally slim, that had never been a problem, but she should be a little tighter, a little firmer, a little back to her old professional shape.

 

So she ended her night with a YouTube pilates tutorial and some warm water with lemon in it, feeling accomplished. Like she had done good things for her number one that day. In her bed, she planned out the following day, keeping her thoughts clear of a certain someone and to occupy her brain, plotted her outfit and the car ride playlist. Fun songs only, no mention of love or kisses or anything else of that sort. She cuddled herself into her pristine white sheets and revised the class notes from earlier in the day in her head. In the end, she fell asleep to that and dreamed of tests and diplomas, which in the morning, she counts as a definite win.

 

On Friday, at three PM, her and Scott are picked up by Luke at the train station and he drives them to the photo studio, explaining that the pictures taken today will be used for promo all over Canada. That they will be on adds out in the big cities, at bus stops, on actual buses and all over the internet. (Tessa thinks she might puke, Scott looks like he’s about to.) Right upon arrival, they’re being ushered inside and fussed over, pampered and treated like _talent_ , which Tessa supposes they are. She is still glad to have Scott there to make everybody light and easy with his jokes, helping her incredibly to be charming and interesting too for the hockey-team worth of new people she meets. See, it’s not like she’s this big social sloth, alright? But she has some...problems in that area.

 

A residue, left-over after-effect from her crippling shyness growing up that she battles by throwing herself into the act of actually getting to _know_ people. By asking them questions and listening intently, cataloguing the bits and pieces she gets, putting them along with names and faces so she can pour her anxiety into knowing exactly who she is dealing with. It also helps when she meets those people again. She then knows what to expect, can control herself and the situation a little and her fellows are impressed that she has remembered their conversation so well.

 

So it doesn’t take long until she knows that their photographer has three children and drove in from Hamilton in the morning and that Kelly, who does their hair and make-up, went to Scott’s high-school but their paths never intersected before today. The first rounds of pictures are taken in jeans and shirts, portraits of their faces and short little blips of them interacting. Once, Scott’s twirling her around a bit in a dance hold because apparently they’re going to be working with the angle of the “childhood skating partners” thing, even if they never really were skating partners in any actual sense of the word but since most of what they will say about their life together will be lies anyway, Tessa can’t be bothered to correct them.

 

In that first outfit, they also do some pre-interview about their love story, which Scott pulls out of his ass as they go along (because apparently they had not had the foresight to actually come up with something beforehand). After that, they’re being ushered back into wardrobe and asked to change into a black dress and grey suit for the glammy part of their pictures and teasers. For that, Tessa needs to get her hair redone and has been sitting with curlers in her hair for a while when her phone rings and her friend Midori’s name lights up her screen.

 

“Hey,” she says, picking up and working her phone awkwardly between the plastic rollers in her hair and her ear.

“Hey, T, I got Liz here, too, you’re on speaker,” Midori says (because as of twenty minutes ago, Tessa is missing their weekly get-together at their favourite bar in London. “We wanted to know how the shoot’s going.”

“It’s going great so far. They’re just prepping us for the second leg of it,” Tessa says as Kelly steps back in behind her and starts unwinding her curls. “Scott’s been hanging out for like half an hour and I’m still getting my hair done.”

“So how fun is it?” Midori asks.

“A lot, so far,” she tells her friend. “I think _that’s_ a job I could do.”

“Yeah, just become a model,” Liz pipes from somewhere further from the speaker, like Tessa hasn’t just been kidding.

“Awesome idea,” she says sarcastically to drive the point home.

“But maybe you can, who knows?” Midori offers. “You might get really famous on this show.”

 

She loves her friends, they’ve always been so supportive. But Tessa is well aware that after her ballet career tanked, none of them really knew what to do with her, how to deal with a perpetually gloomy and insecure girl who’d struggled to find meaning in anything. Midori had at one point suggested Tessa travel with her to stay with her extended family in Hong Kong and then go on some buddhist temple self-awareness vacation to find herself. Liz, meanwhile, had just shaken her blonde hair at her and said “You need to go into trading, that’s where the money’s at.” Like Tessa had ever cared a smidge for _numbers._

 

“I don’t know,” she says now at the new suggestion of becoming a famous person. “I don’t know if I want that.”

“Scott will love being famous,” Liz says. “All those parties. And the girls...”

“Probably,” Tessa sighs. “But I don’t know guys, maybe the show gets cancelled after an episode and we’ll go right back into obscurity.”

“Oh, but you definitely have to keep us posted from the island,” Midory shoots. “No matter what happens.”

“I can’t,” Tessa says regretfully, making a strained face as Kelly pulls on a stubborn strand of hair unwilling to let go of the curler.

“Why?” Liz asks as Kelly apologizes with big gestures, mouthing ‘sorry, sorry, sorry’ over and over and Tessa hurries to put her at ease.

“We’re not allowed phones,” she answers her friends on the phone. “There’s a complete media blackout. Like, we can watch Netflix and the news but we’re not supposed to be on social media and we get, like, extra phones with no internet on it.”

 

“Oh my God, that’s _terrible_ ,” Midori enthuses as if Tessa had just told her that her whole family died in a fire.

“It’s supposed to be a bubble,” she informs them. “No outside influences and no googling the competition. We also don’t get to meet the other couples until we’re in the Caymans.”

“That’s totally wild,” Midori says.

“I know,” Tessa replies.

“So we won’t know if stuff gets weird with you and Scott,” Liz adds.

“It’s not gonna get weird,” Tessa tells her sharply and Midori, or Liz, or both, make some unconvinced sounds. “No, we talked about it. We’re gonna be just fine.”

“Whatever you say,” Midori pipes. “But hold on a minute, did you just say ‘the Caymans’?”

“Yeah,” Tessa confirms, “they got this crazy luxe villa for us where we’ll shoot and live. They showed us the pictures today, it’s like from a Hollywood movie.”

“Ugh, that’s worth getting your heart broken over,” Liz sighs wistfully.

“Stop, saying that,” Tessa murmurs. “I’m not gonna get my heart broken.”

 

“Get your heart broken over what?” Scott’s voice says from somewhere behind her as he pokes his head into the room and Tessa rolls her eyes, trying to keep the pink off of her face and waves him off. “Come on, T, everybody’s waiting.”

“Just five more minutes,” Kelly tells him and he dramatically rolls his eyes before ducking out again. Tessa feels suddenly too large for her little black dress.

“Guys, I gotta hang up,” she tells her friends, unwilling to entertain more of this conversation and so hurries their goodbye’s along.

 

She loves them and appreciates their concern but right now, that’s really not helping. She doesn’t need the reminder that things might blow up terribly as she gets back to the photo set and they ask Scott to lift her into a bridal carry for the shot.

“Tuck at his tie,” Eddy, the photographer says and Tessa does as he bids, smiling brightly at the camera, worrying that she might be too heavy for Scott to carry much longer, but he doesn’t seem to mind. He doesn’t put her back on her feet for a long time. When he does, he’s grinning at her.

“I’m gonna look like a complete ass on those pictures,” he tells her through his teeth, not stopping the smile. “I’ve got so much make up on my face I look like a wax figure.”

He does. Which is why Tessa can’t help but laugh. In that moment, a bit of the tension breaks that has been between them since that day at the mall and she revels in it, in feeling dorky and normal with him again.

 

On their way back to London, the mood still holds and it’s not even weird when Scott says to go through his bullshit dating story, so they got it straight for when it comes up again. Which is a good thing because Tessa learns that she only payed attention for half of it earlier.

“So we got together right after Jess and I broke up,” he recaps half of their way home, “so we’re relatively new. But we’ve been in love with each other forever, yeah?” She nods. “And we just decided to go for it.”

“Didn’t you say something about how we got together?” Tessa asks, shifting in the passenger seat.

“Did you listen to a word I said in there?” He asks back, shaking his head to her apologetic shrug. “Well, since you obviously didn’t, let me tell you how I knocked up a storm at your door the same night I came home from breaking up with my ex. And how you expected I would come crying but instead I made this big, sappy declaration about how it was always you and then we kissed and it was like slow motion.”

“Gross,” Tessa laughs.

(But a little piece of her dies all the same because it sounds like they’re making fun of it...and really that scenario is not that far away from pretty much any daydream she’d had over the years of him pulling his head out of his ass eventually. Alas, it’s not supposed to be. And honestly, if she thinks about it, that's not how it should've gone down either. Mostly because it wouldn't have. Because he wouldn't really have meant a word he'd have said if it had happened. Because he doesn't see her that way and just breaking up with Jess wouldn't have done the trick because it hadn't the last three times. Nope, for Scott to realise that he might've always belonged with her...hell probably would've needed some freezing over. It would take a miracle, probably. And those aren't real.)

 

“So, that villa,” she says after a moment, because she was just doing so good and she doesn’t want to go back into the dark place. “It’s pretty epic.”

“Dude,” Scott nods. “It doesn’t even look real. I mean, straight access to the ocean? That’s insane! We’re gonna have so much fun. Uh, they might even let us swim with the _sharks_!”

He looks like a little boy in a candy store and she laughs, resolving on the spot to find out if they actually would let him do that. Just to see the exact level of excitement and/or fear the real thing would instill in him.

 

“I really can’t wait,” he tells her, sounding all bubbly and Tessa thinks maybe she can find something to look forward there too. Surely a giant beach villa with a pool and a sauna and crystal blue water (as well as the pay they’re getting for taking part on the show, which at least pays for her credit card debt) is a reason to look forward to it.

 

Everything else...the threat of heartbreak looming or potentially the dismantling of her and Scott’s relationship is not a given outcome. It might all turn out great. Actually, it likely will! And this is a whole new world of looking at things, a brave, new, colourful world she would very much like to step into right about now.

 

Because once she and Scott pretend to be together, she’ll see what it would be like and live that lie for a while and then get over it. Obviously! And then she can go back to being his normal friend for the rest of her life. Definitely, it will absolutely cure her of her stupid obsession with him. _Yes_ , she thinks excitedly, looking out of the car window as she goes through her catharsis. This is the perfect thing! This angle of looking at it makes it all so much better instantly. She’ll know once and for all what it would be like to be his girlfriend and he’ll probably be annoying as all hells and gross and rude and the whole concept will lose its allure and then she’ll be finally able to move on for real.

 

“I can’t wait either!” She tells him in earnest, whipping her head around and grins from ear to ear, her heart getting lighter by the second. And the start of their big adventure honestly can’t come soon enough.

 

Who needs love anyway when you can have _freedom_ ? Who needs a swooping romance or that sweet but very, very naive, old-fashioned notion that you need to find your other half somewhere in the world when you can be self-reliant and happy all by yourself? And be a whole person who can survive just fine alone? Who needs the trials and the tribulations and the worrying and the overthinking? Not her. She’s had enough of that for a lifetime. And if getting under him for a pretend make-out session by the pool in front of three rolling TV cameras is what it takes to at long last get _over_ him, that’s just what she will do.

 

It’s genius. It’s absolutely going to work. This is _great._ So the universe can bring everything else the _fuck_ on, Tessa is ready.

 

* * *

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this is a bit of a filler as we're all dying for them to get to the island already but some things needed sorting, especially Scott's wardrobe and Tessa's mindset. One of these two projects is going to reap great success. You can guess which won't.
> 
> Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed! <3


	3. Taking On A New Direction

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next one! We are finally getting to the island! Other things happen! So many things happen, honestly!
> 
> My undying love and the biggest props and respect goes out to my three lovely beta's for this (KEL, KIM and fairwinds09) who went through this 10K+ chapter today with a tooth comb and made me so much better than I could ever be! You raise me up, guys, thank you forever!!
> 
> Okay, so this chapter is a monster...and buried therein are a bunch of little easter eggs about "canon" TS, as well as there are in the first two chapters. Internet points go to the person who finds the most. Fairwinds is currently in the lead, just so you know ;)
> 
> I sincerely hope you enjoy this!

****The lights are too bright and they’re shining right into her face. Tessa tries her hardest not to flinch and squint, knowing that if she does, she will look like a weird goblin in their home-story’s talking heads segment. So she forces her eyes open and grins brightly, listening to Scott relay the bullshit story about the night where he told her he loved her to the fancy tv camera once again. She smiles every time he looks at her and so as to not miss those moments, she just watches him the whole time. He tells the story with so much fondness and wonder in his voice, she ponders that maybe he should have been an actor instead of a skating coach and whenever their eyes meet, his are dazzling and affectionate, like everything truly happened the way he said it did.

 

“I don’t remember much after the big speech, actually,” he says. “I just remember hugging her so tight and her hugging so tight back. Well, I actually do remember that I thought ‘Don’t hurt her, maybe that’s a bit much’ but I was just...so happy.”

“You had electricity running through your body,” Tessa says on a whim and he nods. 

“Yeah, yeah,” he agrees. “It was just like...I had been waiting for that moment for so long, for us to finally get our timing right. And it only took us, what? Thirteen years?”

 

The rest of the interview is more of the same, talking about their childhood friendship, how he was there for her in her darkest moments with her surgery and the end of her dance career. Tessa tells them about the day she quit ballet and realises in horror the moment that her voice breaks and her eyes water, that she has just given a piece of herself away that she will never get back. Meanwhile the producers and camera crew pull her into the full frame to catch any tear she might shed and eventually look like they’re coming in their pants simultaneously when she _does_ start to cry.

“Sorry,” she says and stares at the floor, not even close to processing how she could let this happen, when then Scott gets in there, holds her hand, waves with the other in the direction of the lense and says: “Can we cut, please? Stop filming. Guys!”

 

They do, thankfully, and give her a minute to calm down, but there are no retakes. She knows instantly that this will get milked for all it’s worth, some sad atmospheric track playing under it as she sobs about the worst thing that’s ever happened to her like it’s some scripted bullshit, a tear-jerker backstory. Like it’s the centerpiece of who she will be for the rest of her life: the sad, broken girl that had to give up on her dreams. (It’s ‘Breathe’ by Sia that they underscore her crying with. A ways down the line, she’ll see the clip on twitter and will x out of it before it even gets to the point where they show Scott, clamouring for her fingers, concern and pain etched on his face as he barks at the people behind the lens to cut, sounding a lot harsher than she’ll ever remember it being.)

 

Scott steps up as best as he can, telling some jokes and funny anecdotes, making up an entire story about their spin the bottle kiss that tells Tessa he actually _doesn’t_ remember half of how it really happened. But because he’s making such a valiant effort, she can’t really blame him. The rest of the day, he hovers around her like a hawk. He checks in with her every five minutes, as they walk and talk around London and then change locations to cheesily skate around the rink what little basic choreography they can whip up in the five minutes they allow them to prepare. (They’ll put “Keep On Dancing” by Ellie Goulding as the atmo track for that, framing it like that’s the great gift Scott is making her, getting her to dance for fun even if she can’t dance professionally anymore.) The truth is that she still takes hip hop classes and dances however long her legs allow...she’ll just never be a ballerina again, never a professional dancer.

 

After six hours of shooting, the crew is happy and the unit PA shakes their hands, promising that with what they have, they’ll be able to cut an excellent introductory piece on them for the first episode of the show. He also congratulates them enthusiastically on already doing “so great pretending” to be in love with each other. That they’re so instinctively good at selling their chemistry as something that it’s not. Which honestly makes their whole friendship sound a little cheap when Tessa thinks about it at the end of the day. It’s when they’re sitting at Tim Horton’s together after, bent over treat-yo-self-milkshakes and she’s lost in her head about it. That’s when Scott breaks the silence he’s fallen into since he announced he didn’t want to go home yet and puts words to what she’s thinking. 

 

“I feel dirty,” he says abruptly and she thinks that’s just the phrase she’s been looking for. “Talking about us like that, like it’s all a lie.”

“I know,” she nods, stabbing her straw against the bottom of her shake, watching where it squishes against the plastic. “But it’s what we agreed to.”

“Yeah, but still,” Scott insists. “It’s not all a lie. We do love each other. It’s just not…you know. And for them to act like we’re putting on this great fake ass show is just...unfair.”

“Well, what do you expect? They chose us because of how we are...because...,” she starts and finds that she can’t finish the sentence without saying something weird, so she just lets it trail off. 

 

 _Because we don’t have to pretend._ Or better... _because_ I _don’t have to pretend to feel something when I look at you._

 

“I just want this to be clear between us,” Scott says emphatically and puts his hand over hers where it clutches her cup, making her look up at him. “You’re my best friend. No matter what, I’m proud of you. No matter what, I love you. Okay?”

“Okay,” she says and manages a smile.

“That’s _real_ ,” he goes on, dead serious. “That’s not for show or to sell something. You’re the most important person in the world to me.”

“You, too,” she says and holds his gaze for as long as she dares. It’s really about time they started the fake dating so she can get all those unbidden, ancient but persistent butterflies out of her system. Can it be July yet? Or could she maybe, like, get a grip in the meantime? She should really do something about the tension there. So she does.

 

“Despite the fact that your fake love story for us is _god-awful_ ,” she chuckles, taking a sharp exit to teasing-town. And like she thought he might, he drops his hand from hers to catch it with his own and rubs them together. 

“What?” He asks, his voice level. “I thought it was pretty cute.”

 

“It’s cute alright,” Tessa agrees and then goes on ranting at her shake, thinking it’ll be a funny kind of rant, completely missing that halfway through, Scott looks like she’s punched him in the gut (he reins in his expression quickly, but she doesn’t see that either). “Very cute, but completely unrealistic. In the real world —not the bullshit version—, if you’d have come to me half an hour after breaking up with Jess, that would’ve been so... _wrong._ ” She laughs, almost guffaws. 

 

“If you’d _really_ said those things to me, I’d have known you didn’t mean it,” she says, still shaking her head all amused, because the thought is frankly preposterous, she can’t even picture the scenario, not even after hearing it twice now. “I’d have known you were just there for...validation, or a distraction, or whatever. And that would’ve been...I don’t know, Scott, that would have been pretty terrible, eh? Especially when I would have had every reason to believe that two weeks later, you’d have gone right back to her. I’m not an idiot. You could’ve slapped ‘second choice’ right there on my forehead—or “rebound”. Or both. What would that’ve said about our friendship?!”

 

She looks up then and sees him frozen while his milkshake has turned to a watery vanilla concoction. And suddenly she hears herself. And how that might’ve come out way judgy. And maybe just a little bit unfair? Or a bit too real for six in the evening and being stone cold sober. Potentially, going from his look, she has bypassed teasing-town after all and has raced straight into foot-in-mouth-city. _Quick_ , she thinks, scrambling. _Humour, now. Be funny, T. Make sure he knows you’re not mad at him so he doesn’t get mad at you._

 

“Either way, I’m way out of your league now.” She winks at him and then taps her nose twice. Surely making fun of her nose job which he very openly never approved of and never understood will get him to loosen up again? “Like Kevin said, I’m prettier than you these days.”

“You’ve always been. Always been way out of my league, too, T,” he says, no inflection there, no movement on his face at all, still.

“ _Haha_ ,” she mock-laughs, because that’s bullshit too, but she goes along with it anyway. “Damn right, I was.”

 

She chances another look at him and he still has her fixed there. It seems like he’s weighing some options she can’t even begin to anticipate (which is a thing she doesn’t like at all) but then obviously decides that cracking a lopsided smile at her, is the way forward. _Thank God._

 

“But see, this is how I am actually doing some good on that show,” he quips. “I’ll be giving all my fellow Quasimodos out there hope that they can get an Esmeralda, too. If I can ‘do it’, they can do it, too.” He puts the first ‘do it’ into air quotes, because he’s not really doing it, as if he needs to remind her.

“Oh, you’re so full of it,” she sighs, he knows damn well that he’s a damn catch, even if he’s annoying as shit sometimes. “Quasimodo is a bit extreme, don’t you think?”

“Well, you name it,” he offers. “I’ll take what you give me. Aladdin to your Jasmine? The Beast to your Beauty?”

She studies him then, tilting her head and going through her inner rolodex of _Disney_ heroes for one that fits, ever so glad to have changed the subject. 

 

“Stitch to my Lilo,” she finally decides and that’s when he cracks up. _Praise Jesus_ , they’re back. They’re okay, it’s all good, she didn’t blow it. No need to worry.

“I like that,” he chuckles. “We’ll go with that. That’s such an underrated movie, too!”

For the rest of their shakes they debate underappreciated Disney movies and bemoan the end of the 2D cartoons and if it takes two hours to feel like Tessa and Scott again instead of “ _Tessa And Scott from What’s Love?!_ ”, then they take that time and it’s the right thing to do.

 

The next couple of weeks are filled with making preparations for their journey, getting shots and visas and in Tessa’s case, pushing two term papers into her following semester, all while still studying and eventually passing her end of semester exams. Scott haggles with his mother about being gone during a paperwork-heavy month in the off-season. He will need to cram to finish all his bureaucratic stuff as well as his students’ individual evaluations (which they usually work on over the summer and present at the start of the new season) into the time before the plane takes off to the Caymans. But it’s still a long while out, so long that in mid-June, Tessa has actually half forgotten that it’s coming. 

 

Midori touches upon it, about there only being two weeks left until they head out, at their weekly Friday get together and Tessa almost spits out her red wine.

“Shit, you’re right,” she says, a rare curse leaving her lips before she dabs them off with the back of her hand. “I pushed that so far off for studying.”

“I’m so jealous,” Liz says wistfully. “A month in the Caymans and you’re getting _paid_ for it, too!”

 

“It might not be a month,” Tessa tells her friend. “We might get voted off the first week because we can’t sell our story.”

“Yeah, right,” Midori says. “Exactly how many times in your life have people thought the only way you’re not together is because one of you is gay?! You’ll do just fine. You’ve got more chemistry than most married couples I know.”

“Well, then at least that’ll be good for one thing at last,” Tessa jokes but the others don’t seem to find it all that funny.

“Can I say something?” Liz asks after a moment, sounding grave.

“No,” Tessa says decidedly. “I know what it is, but it’s not necessary. See, I figured it all out.” And then she explains her theory to them, about how fake-dating him will cure her of her misguided desire to _real_ -date him and she does such a great job of it that by the end, she has reduced her friends to ‘fair enough’ shrugs.

 

“So, now we can talk about something else,” Tessa closes. “I’ll have more Scott next month than I’ll know what to do with, so let’s just move on, okay?” 

“Fine,” Midori agrees. “What are you going to wear?” 

Tessa groans at the overplayed vapidness of the question but then winds up telling them about the outfits she plans to pack anyway.

 

The last two weeks dribble by a lot slower than the previous ones have. Both Tessa and Scott use the time to meet up with their friends, separate and together, and are tan and beach-ready (courtesy of the shared gym time they put in) by the time the first of July rolls around and they’re finally on their way to the Toronto airport. In the wee hours of the morning, they’re all crammed together in his parents’ minivan. Scott and Tessa sitting in the back, her in the middle like she’s twelve, boxed in by her Mom and Scott, who is definitely too large for the back seat and complains in regular intervals about the time of day, the heat, and the stuffiness in the car. It’s a hot summer in Canada that year and even in the morning, it’s already gearing up to be an uncomfortably hot day. Arriving at the air conditioned airport is a true blessing and their families take their sweet time saying their goodbyes, especially since they’re waiting for Jordan to join the group to see Tessa and Scott off on their adventure.

 

Once Tessa’s sister has arrived, they march their little congregation to one of the fast food joints in the arrivals hall for breakfast, surrounded by all sorts of summer vacationers, and talk about the Caymans and blue skies and crystal clear seas. Tessa has a bowl of cereal with yoghurt but keeps snagging bites from Scott’s bagel anyway and he attempts to slap her hand away every time but she is faster and sticks her tongue out to him.

“Aren’t you two adorable,” Kate says. “You do that and people will wonder if you’re brother and sister after all.”

“Mom,” Tessa hisses. 

“I’m just saying,” Kate shrugs. “You need a little sizzle there.”

“There’ll be plenty of sizzling, eh?” Scott jokes and then pulls Tessa into a headlock, messing up her hair. “Just as soon as we touch down. Or do you want a preview now?” He moves on to dip his own head down, mouth comically wide open as if he’s going to swallow her whole. Suffice it to say that what Tessa can see of it, trapped in his grip, is hardly sexy.

“Please, no,” Jordan says and pulls Scott off of her sister to save her from his childish fussing around.

 

Some time later, as they are standing around at the flight board, luggage checked in and everything, Jordan does her _real_ version of looking out for Tessa. “You take care of her, alright?” She tells him and Tessa can just make it out, coming out of a hug with her Mom.

“I will,” Scott promises.

“And don’t be a dick on television,” Jordan adds to hearty laughs from the group.

“I’ll try,” Scott says and keeps the laughter going.

“Bye, sis,” Jordan says, moving on to hug her sister while Scott hugs Kate and his own parents and it feels a little like they are sending them off to summer camp. It’s pretty similar, probably. Except this one might have even more kissing between childhood friends.

 

“I’m gonna miss you,” Tessa says from under Jordan’s arm to their families.

“We’re gonna miss you too,” her Mom says and then Alma plucks her from her sister’s half-embrace to hug her tightly.

“Good luck,” Scott’s mom says and then tucks her into her side. “You know, I’m still not a big fan of this but you’re old enough to know what you’re doing.”

“And it’s one million dollars if we win,” Scott reminds his mother.

“No amount of money is worth making a mockery of love,” Alma laments, shaking her head gravely over the airport noise, the clattering of heels and the hollering echoes of PA announcements. “But I’m just an old, sentimental woman, what do I know?”

“Don’t be so romantic about it, Mom,” Scott says, rolling his eyes and then putting his arm around her free one. “It’s just a game show.”

“Which you’ll be late for if you don’t leave now,” Joe warns, pointing at the board. “Look.”

“Oh, fuck,” Scott exclaims and ignores his mother chiding him for cursing in the face of the flashing letters that spell ‘boarding’ next to their flight gate. “Come on, T, let’s go!”

 

He jumps into action, grabs his and her carry-ons into each of his hands, shouts a “Bye, guys!” and then kicks the air in Tessa’s direction to get her to move. He moves right on ahead while she goes and presses a kiss on each available cheek and then ducks her head apologetically, trying to take a mental picture of her family to last for the next four weeks and then chases after Scott. It takes until the security line for her to catch up to him, even with him pulling both their suitcases.

 

“We have thirty minutes until the gate closes, will you relax?” She tells him exasperatedly, trying to catch her breath.

“But Dad said…,” Scott heaves back at her, making a pained face from exertion.

“Yeah, boarding started but that goes on forever,” Tessa says. “Do you have any idea how long it takes to get 600 people on a plane?!”

“No,” he says and she chuckles because that’s actually true. Scott has never flown further than Detroit and those planes are much smaller. The Caymans is the furthest he’ll ever have travelled once they get there. While she has gone to Paris twice during her time at the Ballet school on class trips, Scott has never been big on travelling at all, so she can’t really fault him for jumping the gun on this boarding thing.

 

Needless to say that of course they make it onto the plane in time and Scott is almost little-boy-levels of excited at the size of the Jumbo and giddily settles into their business class seats (the production sprung for that so they wouldn’t have to fly economy). Tessa takes in her surroundings, breathing in the smell of the leather seats, the plastic aisles, the various perfumes around her. 

 

She loves travel. She loves this promise of adventure and even if she is super nervous and queasy about their destination, she milks the way there for all it’s worth. There is not a hot towel unused, not a round of drinks refused, and not an episode of _Project Runway Season Ten_ on the on-flight entertainment channel unwatched. It isn’t until the “fasten seatbelt” sign comes on that Tessa’s nerves come back. Just in time for Scott to wake up from his nap with bleary eyes and sleep breath which he conquers by mint, wordlessly passing her one, too.

 

“Hey,” he drawls, chewing the mint loudly instead of letting it melt, impatiently after instant gratification as per usual. “Are we there yet?”

“Almost,” she replies. “But remember, they’re picking us up with cameras. So we start acting the second we leave baggage claim.”

“Bring it on,” Scott grins, but it doesn’t quite reach his eyes. He’s anxious, too. In fact, he’s so anxious, he doesn’t speak all the way off the plane, through waiting at the visa line and collecting their luggage. The next thing he says to her is “Showtime,” just before they walk out of the gate and then right into the arms of Luke and his camera guy. 

 

_And so the game begins._

 

The camera is already trained on them and Tessa puts on a great big smile, glancing over her shoulder to Scott slightly behind her. He smiles back at her and she keeps walking. Eventually, Luke taps the camera guy on the shoulder and so he puts the clunky black thing down and their coordinator crosses the distance still between them in order to shake both their hands warmly.

“Did you have a good flight?” He asks, his white teeth looking even whiter than back in bleak old Canada. Even in this stuffy airport, the Caymans are already way more vibrant, all the colours sharper and more saturated. 

“I slept through most of it,” Scott tells him. “We had a super early morning.”

As if on cue, Tessa yawns heartily and nearly drops her carry-on with how fast she hurries her hand over her mouth, profusely apologising for her lack of manners.

“Don’t worry,” Luke smiles kindly. “We’ll just film a short intro and talking heads thing and then you can sleep in the car over to the villa.”

 

Oh, the villa. Lordy, it’s really happening now, isn’t it? Tessa is preoccupied with this weird mix of anticipation and worry, doing her best to focus on Scott as he talks into the camera, shoulder to shoulder with her, explaining that they just arrived and are so excited to get started on their adventure. Then they shoot the intro, which is basically just him saying “Hi, I’m Scott Moir,” and her going: “And I’m Tessa Virtue” and then him going, “And that’s what love’s got to do with it.” (This will later segue into their homestory, they’re told.)

 

He smiles at her then and there’s this warmth in his look that she’s not sure she’s ever seen so openly directed at her. It tugs at something inside her and reminds her that it’s go-time now. That now’s the moment she can start on her project. Now she can smile back at him with open adoration and let herself believe that it’s real. Now she can get her fill of learning what it would be like to be his and gorge herself until she’s sick of it.

 

Her face is split in saccharine affection and on a whim, she maneuvers herself under his arm, giggling when he’s a little startled. He kisses the top of her head anyway. He’s done that before. But he’s never lingered like he does now, never kept touching her as long as he does after. He’s holding her hand from the moment Luke calls “Cut” to the introduction to their driver Jeremy. Walking after the driver as he pulls their luggage, leading them to short-term parking, Tessa wonders if Scott’s doing it for show or moral support but it’s too hot to really ponder an answer to that. Stepping outside, the tropical air hits her like a brick in the face, the sun shining down on them blaring and relentless. There’s not a cloud in the sky.

 

“Greg is gonna ride shotgun in the car with you to get some b-roll,” Luke tells them as they part ways at the black town car waiting for them. “I got the second unit coming in to meet the next couple; two are already at the villa. Erica will meet you there. Just act natural, alright?”

“You got it,” says Scott, a layer of nerves beneath his voice that Tessa is pretty sure only she can hear. Because it’s one thing to be cute together with just a camera in front of them, it’s another entirely to do it under the scrutiny of a bunch of strangers who are all trying to catch them in a lie.

 

Climbing into the back-seat after Scott, Tessa tries to make this a problem for later and instead tries to think about how to make them look in love when Greg shoulders his camera again, looking uncomfortably twisted in the passenger seat. What would she do now if Scott was hers? Looking at him there as he settles in, shrugging off the jean jacket he really doesn’t need, the question answers itself. She gives him a moment to get comfortable and then slots in closer, as close as her seatbelt allows and puts her head on his shoulder. If it weren’t for the AC in the car, this would be way too close and too hot but as it is, she’s peachy about the general climate.

 

Scott follows her move unquestioningly, wrapping a lose arm around her and touching his lips to the crown of her head.

“You tired?” He murmurs, low and intimate, and it makes Tessa shiver (and not because Jeremy just kicked up the AC). She hums a yes and he tugs her in closer.

“Is it okay if I nap?” She asks Greg, who makes a face and the shrugs, the camera bobbing up and down on his shoulders, nearly hitting the ceiling of the car.

“It’s just a ten minute ride,” he tells her. “The last bit of it goes right by the ocean, you should see that.”

“Oh fun,” Tessa says and perks up, her will to relax for a second against Scott’s chest broken by the promise of a great sea view. “Then we’ll just watch.”

“Feel free to be really expressive about what you see,” Greg says and nudges his head in reference to the camera. Tessa complies. By the time they make the turn onto the shore street, she excitedly grabs Scott’s hand and folds herself half over him, clamouring for the view out of his window.

 

“Babe,” she exhales and puts her palm high on his thigh for good measure, squeezing the firm flesh beneath her hand. “Look at that!”

His proximity, even his scent that is only sweetened by the added whiff of sea salt and sunshine, is fading into the background in the face of the nature and scenery outside. Every colour is so beyond sharp, so startlingly clear. From the turquoise water to the glimpses of white, dusty sand peeking through the bushes of the scattered houses they pass. She wants to get closer and keeps on climbing on Scott, grabbing him tighter.

“Tess,” he exhales, low under his breath. He buries his face in her hair, getting close to her ear. “Your hand.” 

 

For emphasis, he puts his on hers, locking it under his fingers and from the movement, she understands what he’s getting at: her hand has been brushing the side of _him_ , little Scott, not quite hard or anything but distinctly not part of his thigh and she’s instantly mortified. 

 

Scott closes his grip on her as she’s going rigid, mutters “relax” so she doesn’t get jumpy, and she manages to keep a lid on it and her hand where it is. She just leans out, keeps her wide eyes trained on him and says loudly, for the camera’s benefit: “I can’t wait to get to the villa.” (That’ll surely make for a nice soundbite.)

 

Scott’s just looking at her. And because she would kiss him now if she was his girlfriend, she does. It’s technically the fourth kiss they’ve ever shared, but it’s the first she takes the time to feel. It’s of course not comparable to the one they shared when they were kids (because that landed on the corner of her mouth at best anyway), and it’s not blurred out by spin-the-bottle liquid courage or diluted by white noise and crippling anxiety in some conference room in a tv production company’s offices. 

 

This time, she puts her mouth on his languidly, moving her lips once, twice until he gives her some pressure back and then she sweeps her tongue over his upper lip, so that he opens up for her, just a little. She doesn’t plan to makeout with him in the back of that car like teenagers. But she wants a real kiss, one that lingers. One that she can feel out to its edges...one she’ll be able to taste on her lips after.

 

It takes a moment until Scott kisses her back but when he does, he does with gusto, taking his hand off of where hers still sits, just about brushing his situation, and works it into her hair. A moment or forty later, she goes one step further, in that she arches her back into it and adjusts her hand on his thigh just so. Just slight enough to maybe seem like an accident but enough to fully make contact. He hisses sharply into her mouth and next thing she knows, he’s caught her bottom lip between his teeth in a distinct warning and then breaks the kiss. 

 

Faster than she can react, he crosses his legs and catches her wandering hand between both of his, as if to contain her from doing anything else rash. She smirks at him because she can’t quite help herself, admittedly a little bit dizzy and drunk on the kiss. But the way he stares back at her makes the AC feel like a damn failure, practically non-existent. Tessa has half a mind to go in for a bit more, anything to keep that look of breathless confusion and startled hunger on his face, but then the car rumbles to a halt and Greg clears his throat, reminding Tessa that, yep, he’s still there and so is his camera. 

“We’re here guys,” he announces needlessly and Scott nods towards the door on her side once Greg and Jeremy have peeled themselves out of the car.

 

“I need a minute,” he says, looks at a point somewhere beside her head and then at his crotch. _Oh._

“Oh,” she mutters.

“Yeah,” he grumbles and it looks almost like he’s _mad_ at her. “You know, that’s kinda the hot zone. I thought I was making myself clear.” (When he told her off about her hand and she went there anyway.)

“I’m just trying to sell it,” she says apologetically and admittedly a little bit defensively. 

“I know,” he says, somewhat gruffly. “Just gimme a sec, okay?” 

“I didn’t mean to sexually harass you,” she says quickly, suddenly ashamed of herself, her hand almost shaking on the door handle. “I’m sorry.”

He shakes his head at her and then laughs, which sounds like he’s trying not to. “You didn’t. It’s not...I mean, when we gotta sell it, that stuff isn’t off limits. You can, like...grope me all you want but just maybe...putting your hand on my dick in the back of a car...that’s going a bit hard, no?” Then he cringes, just a little, hearing what he just said and adds sheepishly: “No pun intended.”

 

Okay, now she’s _really_ mortified. Is he really just telling her off for barely grazing his business with the side of her palm as if she tried to jerk him off on camera?! That’s not what she was doing! And the thought of him thinking that she might have been gunning for anything adjacent to this makes her ears burn.

“I didn’t put my hand on your…,” she starts and pauses, her lips twitching involuntarily. _Ugh, don’t be a baby, Tessa. Just say it_. “Dick.” She glares at him but she still doesn’t want to leave this car in a tiff with him, so she adds, again: “I’m sorry.”

“I’m not mad,” he clarifies and his face softens. “I just wasn’t prepared. And I’m good, now, so we can go out there and be the most touchy assholes in this whole place. Just maybe warn a guy before you go for his jugular. I gotta protect my modesty, you know?”

“You’re an idiot,” she scoffs but not without affection. “So _dramatic_.”

 

They’re laughing when they get out of the car and for payback, Scott slaps her butt hard when she bends down to pluck the handle from her carry-on that Jeremy has put next to the hub of the car. _Butt-slapping_ , Tessa notes, _that’s new._ Not that she doesn’t know he does that...but so far he’s only done it with Jess. Greg watches the exchange but doesn’t comment on it, instead ushers them toward the front gate of the villa, the scale of which Tessa appreciates now for the first time. It looks massive and luxurious, like she’s tumbled headfirst into some parallel world in which she is a superstar and this is her summer getaway. They walk after Greg, while Jeremy backs out of the driveway to go and collect the next couple from the airport. Scott walks before Tessa, his head wobbling as he, too, takes in their surroundings.

 

“Fucking hell,” he says just before Greg opens the front door and leads them into a spacious foyer with glass doors looking into a giant living space that seems to have no windows at all, just white pillars on sandy marble that opens onto the shore and the azure ocean. It’s breathtaking. 

“You can leave your suitcases here, the maid’s gonna bring it to your room,” Greg tells them. “I’ll get your reactions to the room later and a short reaction to the house once you’ve had a chance to get a good look around. We already _filmed_ the tour with the first couple but you’ll still get one off-camera of course.”

As he finishes with his rundown of what's going to happen, Erica breezes in through the door from the living room and greets them warmly, like they're old friends.

 

“Welcome to the villa,” she beams. “Ready to meet the competition?”

“Are we ever?” Scott quips, which Tessa knows means no. She’s so distracted by the sheer luxury of the heavy, yet slick and artfully arranged furniture in the larger room as they walk into it, she doesn’t even see the four people standing around on the deck outside. 

“I’m gonna stay behind now,” Erica tells them over her shoulder and then stops at the large dining table and points to a tray of champagne flutes. “Just grab a drink and Greg will follow you outside to get a natural shot of you meeting the others.”

 

Which is exactly what he does. Tessa can almost feel the camera zoom in on Scott taking her hand, entwining their fingers and giving her one last look and reassuring squeeze before their scam fully begins. And then they step outside. There’s another guy with a camera outside but most notably, two other couples that turn around to them simultaneously. The first to speak is a tall, tan man with a Clark Kent face and hairstyle, a winning smile as he leads a shorter, blonder, and sharp-featured woman by her waist to meet them. He holds out his hand to Tessa.

“Hey, I’m Andrew,” he says pleasantly. “This is Kaitlyn.”

“Hi,” the woman says and repeats the handshakes started by her boyfriend, with a surprisingly more firm grip.

“Tessa,” Tessa smiles at them and Scott says his own name.

 

The other couple follows suit. Two women about their age whose outfits are not matching at all, as Tessa notes, who introduce themselves as Bonnie and Kitty. Bonnie has a cute honey-blonde bob and Kitty is a ginger, wider hips and a brighter smile than her partner but equally as engaging as they raise their glasses to clink. As far as first impressions go, the four of them seem pleasant and unassuming. But of course Tessa is already cataloguing every glance thrown at Scott and her, the two pairs already scanning them for signs of deception. Eventually Scott mirrors Andrew’s comfortable waist-grip on Kaitlyn. There’s a nice breeze coming in from the sea, which is why it doesn’t bother Tessa too much that his hand is clammy on her skin beneath her crop top. She turns into him, putting her head lightly on his shoulder and giggles.

 

“This is amazing, isn’t it?” She asks the group very conscious of the two cameras filming the entire exchange. “Did you have a chance to look at everything yet?”

“We got the tour, yeah,” Andrew says lightly. “Not too shabby.”

“Of course he’s used to it,” Kaitlyn says on an affectionate eyeroll and then makes very overt heart-eyes at him. “He’s a luxury realtor.”

“Oh, awesome,” Scott says and nods. “I teach skating.”

“Figure skating?” Andrew asks, perking up noticeably and Scott nods.

“I used to do that,” he tells him. “Quit before the national scene, though.”

“Yeah, I went to Junior Nationals a million years ago,” Scott shrugs, “but it wasn’t meant to be.”

“And what do you do, Tessa?” Kaitlyn asks.

“I’m...um, well, I’m getting my BA in psychology and I’m a waitress,” she says, a tiny bit embarrassed that she’s not a luxury realtor.

 

“Waitress pride!” Chimes in Bonnie and holds out her hand for a high five. “Beats working in a drab office everyday, like someone I know.” She laughs and Kitty nudges her in the side.

“It’s not drab just because it’s accounting,” she says. “At least I can pay my bills.”

Bonnie sticks out her tongue and kisses her girlfriend on the cheek with a natural intimacy that would be enough to convince Tessa they’re the real thing, if she needed convincing, which she doesn’t because she knows that her and Scott are the only fake thing around.

 

She reacts to this thought by getting closer to him and starts drawing patterns on his back. He reciprocates by dropping another kiss on her head. She still feels like they’re botching up a school play in the face of the genuine coupledom in front of them. 

 

“Thanks guys,” says Erica then, turning the corner from inside. “I think we got enough for the pleasantries. We’re gonna shoot Tessa and Scott getting their room now and then we’ll meet back here in two and a half-hours to film the big dinner where you’ll meet the last three couples.” 

With that, she extends her arm and nods to Tessa and Scott to follow her inside. 

“That went well, don’t you think?” She asks them conspiratorially as soon as they reach the hallway into the left wing of the house. Greg is running ahead of them to position himself in their room, while the other camera guy, that Erica says is Hank, follows them.

“We got you in the blue room,” the producer tells them as she falls behind the camera again. “third door on the right. Ground floor Ocean view, two steps from the hot tub. Feel free to react verbally.”

 

(As if there was any other way to react to that room with that view.) Tessa squeaks, actually, like a joyful little piglet at the smart and minimal decor, the king size bed and walnut dresser and the pull out Queen sofa in the corner arranged into a chaise longue-style couch decked with a bunch of cute throw pillows. Everything decorative, like bedside lamp shades, curtains the rugs on either side of the bed a softly muted, light blue that blends incredibly well with the sight of the water from the room-high, open windows.

“That’s a big bed,” is the first thing Scott says. “I’ll have to go searching for you in there.”

 

And this is the first time that Tessa properly realises that they will be sharing a bed for however long it’ll be they can fool people into buying their relationship. Oh dear, oh lordy. How is this just sinking in now?! The last time they’d shared a bed had been when she was about ten and they fell asleep on Scott’s basement watching 101 Dalmatians for the seven hundredth time. 

“I think you’ll find me just fine,” she says, trying to give her brain something else to focus on and drops herself onto the bed.

“Awesome, hold it there,” says Greg. “Let us just rearrange real quick.” He motions at Hank to flank them and his colleague does as he is bid. “Can you make out again? It was a bit bumpy in the car, I wanna make sure we have options for the final edit. But maybe no lip biting this time, that was a bit too sexual for 8PM.”

 

Tessa barely contains a triumphant “Ha!” at Scott, because in the end, it was his biting that was too much, not her hand ghosting over his privates. She settles for making a face at him and he glares at her.

“Okay, good to go,” Greg tells them. “Can you say what you said last again so we have the pick up?”

“Want me to sit down again, too?” She asks, trying to be helpful and does so after Greg nods.

“I think you’ll find me just fine,” she says, and once again let’s herself drop onto the mattress and goes on to pull Scott after her by his hand. He follows but is not very forthcoming with the rest, so she initiates the kissing for the second time that day. She holds herself back this time, though. Keeping her hands on his shoulder and knee and he kisses her back chaste and soft. But that’s a nice pace, too, she finds. She still can’t resist coaxing some little tongue from him with nibbles and grazing teeth and when his fingers curl into her hair, she thinks he might like this slow, soft thing, too. At least judging from the little whine she thinks she hears coming from the back of his throat after a while of that.

 

“Hmph, guys,” he says then, still against her lips before he turns out to the others. “D’you think you could give us a minute?”

“Cut it,” Erica says from her quiet observer’s spot in the corner and for the first time in her life, Tessa can imagine what it feels like to work in the porn industry. The thought that people just watched all that kissing still makes her feel weird and exposed. “Very good thinking, Scott!” Their producer praises excitedly. “Such a nice touch. Now can we get you actually shooing the guys out? Then we can end this on you closing the doors in the lens. People will eat that up.”

“Yeah, sure,” Scott says, his hands still in Tessa’s hair.

“We’ll pick it right up,” Greg nods and Scott’s eyes flit to Tessa’s for a moment, looking for instructions but she doesn’t know what he wants from her so she just shrugs and leaves him to fend for himself.

  
“Yeah, okay,” he says when the cameras are rolling again. “I’m gonna kick you out now.” (If he didn’t say it like it was a cute joke, it would sound horribly fake and scripted, but somehow Scott has a knack for this, apparently.) He gets up, running his hand down her neck down to her arm until he absolutely has to let go and then he makes those ‘get lost’ waving motions at Hank and Greg, who back away until he finally closes the door in their faces. Only to open it again after a couple of seconds.

 

“Was that okay?” He asks into the hall as Tessa slots in behind him, just in time to see Erica give an enthusiastic thumbs up. 

“Brilliant,” she assures them. “I’ll just give you a quick tour of the house now and then you have a bit of a break to settle in, alright?”

 

The rest of the house is just as extravagant and beautiful as the first glimpses of it they got. There’s slick granite countertops in the kitchen, the finest finishes on every piece of furniture, and spectacular pieces of art lining the halls of the second floor. All the bedrooms they get to peek into share spectacular ocean views and private balconies, or covered porticos. The kitchen comes equipped with modern stainless appliances and a spacious breakfast bar with bar stools. Crossing the garden and heated pool, they pass by the guest cottage which sits at the far end of the pool. The cottage also features a covered veranda, an outdoor kitchen, and a bar area that looks so catalogue ready, Tessa almost cries. She takes Scott’s hand about halfway-through when she can’t help but miss their competition still lounging about, eyeing them.

 

She keeps up a running commentary right along with the running of her her hand up and down Scott’s arm and torso, chuckling and giggling about whatever he says when he replies, and it’s all just mindless chatter about the size of things and how amazing everything looks. The tour doubles back into the house, through the private cinema and sauna and even inside, she doesn’t let go of his hand. If he minds, he doesn’t say anything, but at the last leg of their exploration, he also stops saying stuff pretty much all together. Which is unusual for him. He doesn’t even say anything when they go back outside and Erica takes them to the beach, telling them that they need to wear hard shoes if they choose to go out into the water here, because they’re literally standing on a coral reef (!!).

 

From out on the lawn, they can walk right back to their bedroom suite as it opens out onto their oceanfront deck, nestled against manicured lawns down to the beach. Once they get there, their suitcases are already waiting for them, which Tessa takes as a cue to start unpacking, agreeing to Erica’s suggestion of Greg filming her in the process.

“I need to grab a drink,” Scott tells her, though, when she asks if he wants to help, and he backs out again backwards, slowly.

 

He doesn’t come back until she hasn’t only unpacked her things, but his as well. She’s arranged all their clothes by colours in the walk-in closet adjacent to the ensuite bathroom, so they can match quicker and easier in the mornings (it also helps immediately, when she picks up a light off-white summer dress with little blue roses and sorts out a pair of khaki shorts and a blue dress shirt for him, laying it out on the bed, ready for him to change into  if he ever decides to come back). When everything down to her tampons has found a new home in their room, Tessa thanks Greg for his time, and when he’s gone, wonders what lengths Scott took to find something drinkable (wonders also, briefly, if he meant _a_ drink instead of just aqua and he’s off hammered by the pool) but when she finally goes looking for him outside, he’s neither there nor in the kitchen. 

 

She doesn’t exactly want to alert the other couples that he’s MIA and she has not a clue where he’s at, though, so she doesn’t ask if they have seen him and instead goes to take a shower, freshen up leisurely, and then change into her dress. He’s still not back ten minutes before they’re meant to reconvene for the first “meeting” of all the couples together, which leads to Tessa actually getting to know the other three couples as they get in all by herself. 

 

There’s Shana and Deric (a finance analyst and British expat from Vancouver with caramel skin and model good looks), Jeffrey and Justin (actual wedding planners from Toronto) and Carly and Jim (who are both teachers and sadly so very bland, she has trouble remembering their names). They all ask her where her boyfriend is and Tessa squirms. And lies, about how ‘he’s napping’ and that she’ll go find him. There’s a special urgency to her step when she sees that Erica is taking great note of the situation and even more so, when she is pretty sure she hears Greg’s heavy footsteps following behind her, as she makes her way back to their room. Scott, of course, is nowhere to be found. _Holy hells, where is that man?!_

 

She steps outside of her room, ruffling her hair and then there, finally, is Scott making his way down the beach and into their garden area, of course in full view of the living room where everybody else is waiting, seeing the guy she just told them was napping, prancing about the grass and waving at them like a dweeb. _Jesus Christ._  

 

Growling in frustration, she picks up her feet and half jogs to meet him before he can crash into the villa and completely squash their entire chance at the money before they’ve even spent one night at the house and stops him at the edge of the pool. She can hear rustling behind her and knows instantly that Greg and maybe Hank, too, have caught up with them. She curses the mic on her dress collar, curses herself that she was so eager to put it on while waiting for Scott in the living room earlier.

 

“Hey honey, where did you go?” She asks him sweetly, shooting daggers at him with her eyes because those Greg and his camera won’t be able to pick up.

“Just...outside,” Scott says.

“But when I left, you were napping,” she tells him and he frowns at her, not understanding until she squares her jaw at him and glances down at the mic between her boobs.

“Oh, yeah, well, I woke up,” he says dumbly. “And then I just walked up the beach.”

“You missed the others get in, Scott,” she tells him and then drops her voice to be hopefully too low for the mic to pick up over the breeze. “And I had no idea where you went off to. Do you know that that looks like?”

“I’m sorry,” he says and sounds it, too. “I just needed to…I just needed a breather. I’m sorry.” He looks at her and then adds: “Babe,” kike an afterthought. It’s the fakest moment of the day so far and it has her bite the inside of her cheek hard.

 

“Kiss me,” she mouths at him angrily, so they can at least cover for that, if not for the cameras (since they got their share of kissing in for the day), then for the others, who are probably watching from inside the house. Scott obliges and by now, she knows how he kisses and can anticipate the angles and tilts of his head and knows before he does when he’ll start to grab her head. But then what’s new is how he lets his hands wander, just after, and then deepens the kiss and grabs her by the ass and pulls her against his front. Oh, _alrighty._

 

He pulls her up to her tip toes and for the second time that day, she makes close physical contact with his groin and can’t help but gasp when she does. Which coincides with the sharp end of the kiss, courtesy of Scott. She glances up to him as she sinks down back to her full feet and raises a quizzical eyebrow at him. He wobbles his head, which he must think suffices as communication.

“I laid out a change of clothes for you in our room,” she tells him, deciding to let the weird moment go. “Make it a quick change.”

 

Scott’s big introduction to the other couples is his self-deprecating version of “Sorry, I need constant supervision,” while Tessa comments fondly with her version of “Oh, he fell asleep, woke up and then wandered off to see the beach and then forgot the time like a child, haha ha, that silly man, he’d lose his head if it wasn’t screwed on.”

“That just goes to show that I’m completely lost without her,” he tells the group charmingly, and everybody politely laughs before they sit down for a semi-scripted dinner, going through pleasant conversation where they’re supposed to establish their “couple”-profiles.

 

Kaitlyn and Andrew are put forth as the well-to-do, cosmopolitan ones, Bonnie and Kitty are the urban, modern lesbians, Jeffrey and Justin the adorable gays (let it not be said that television is overly innovative these days), Shana and Deric are the international ones, the newly united former long-distance couple, Carly and Jim are the down-to-earth, heartland kids and Tessa and Scott are the childhood sweethearts. 

 

Scott does most of the work for that, retelling their path from kids at the rink to teenage best friends to the great big, epic story he made up about them getting together. Tessa cringes inwardly, like she thinks she might do forever now, since their talk about it in Tim’s and his weird reaction to it, but she doesn’t show it. Not for a moment. She just gazes at him all lovelorn as he speaks.

 

“So I told her that she’s always been the one,” Scott tells the group, finishing his recollection and his eyes glisten dreamily. And yeah, it’s a whole thing now, that story, but she really has to commend his acting chops all the same. “And that she’s _it_ for me. Forever,” Scott ends with a bang, turning to her, puts his hand on her neck over her shoulder to massage her a bit and smiles like she’s the moon and he’s a lovelorn wolf, dedicated to adoring her forever.

 

He’s so full of shit. 

 

But no one seems any the wiser. Tessa is still glad when the dinner table conversation switches to the other couples. By the end of it, she’s a bit tipsy on the wine and when Erica and a reappeared Luke call the end of day one, she breathes a sigh of relief. They tell them to enjoy the rest of the night and to be aware that the first elimination challenge is coming the day after and will be a “Newlywed”-game of sorts and that’s that.

 

For a while after, they all sit together in the living room, now camera-less (except of course for the corner cameras in all the common spaces that will film everything big-brother style and will be intercut with the high quality footage shot throughout the day). It’s more relaxed still, their speech less rigid and refined and Tessa watches Scott and Andrew become fast friends in real time, bonding over skating and then hockey (Scott’s _real_ big sports love). When the clock strikes ten, Tessa thinks she has held out long enough being sociable and gently probs him in the side where they sit out on the patio.

 

“I’m gonna turn in,” she tells him. “Got some sleep to catch up on.”

“I’ll be there in a sec,” he murmurs and then leans in to peck her on the lips, the first kiss that day that feels natural and like they are just two people who do this regularly. _That’s it_ , she thinks crossing the garden to get to their room. That’s the moments she’s after. The moments that feel real enough for her to pretend. She’s going to live on that, hopefully enough to blur out the chance of awkwardness when he joins her in bed.

 

He doesn’t for a while, though. She is already under the sheets, drowsy and half-asleep when he slips in.

“Sorry, got carried away with the guys,” he whispers and crosses the room looking for his stuff.

“I put everything in the closet,” she tells him perfunctorily. “Through the bathroom, sleep shirts are at the far wall, middle drawer."

He comes back ten minutes later in a grey shirt on top of his boxers and walks up to the bed. But he waits at the foot of it, eying her.

“Do you want me to take the pull-out couch?” He asks her.

“Don’t be silly,” she tells him. “If anybody comes snooping by our rooms and sees you sleep there, we’ll be made immediately.”

“Okay,” he says, but still takes his sweet time settling in next to her.

 

Once he is lying down, he rolls to his side to face her. She turns off the light because the sight of him on the pillow beside her head is something she isn’t quite prepared for after all and she’d like all the shelter from the dark that she can get. She’d rather he not see how shallow her breath is suddenly, just from the thought of him...under the covers. Next to her.

 

“I’m sorry about earlier,” he whispers, once the lack of light has settled onto them, letting their privacy seep back in and his voice loses the edge she hadn’t noticed before had been there the whole day. “It’s just...it’s a little weird, isn’t it?”

“All the kissing?” She asks, turning to her side too, propped up on her elbow and unsure how to feel about what is happening. Unsure if it’s a bad thing or just a normal thing they’ll need to keep doing...talk through the process of their scheming and how it makes them feel.

“Among other things,” he says and she decides it’s probably a bad thing. “It’s not bad,” Scott says, as if he’s reading her mind (where he rather probably just read her face in the shadows). “I mean, you’re a good kisser.” He blinks, eyes flitting to her lips and then hurriedly back to hers. “Very good. It’s nice.” A moment passes. Tessa stops breathing. “But it’s still super strange, eh?”

Tessa breathes again. 

 

Yeah, he’s still not into her. _Nothing’s changed, T._

 

“We knew it was gonna be,” she says, the momentary weirdly promising tension dispersed into low-key worrying once more. “Do you regret coming here?”

“No,” Scott shoots. “I just gotta get used to you...you know?”

“Not really, no,” she says because she doesn’t. Get used to having to be close to her? Is it really weirding him out so much? And why? Does she have bad breath? Or look ugly up close? Is she really so unappealing to him?

“I mean, you’re so affectionate,” he shrugs, making the bed quiver around them. “And giggly.” 

 

_What?!_

 

“I’m supposed to be your _girlfriend_ ,” she reminds him, sounding prissier than she means to be. What else does he expect her to do?!

“I know,” he says. “I just didn’t think you’d be so-”

“So?” She cuts in challengingly.

“Cutesy?” He tries and she half-laughs, half-scoffs.

“Well, _I_ was going for sexy and irresistible,” she says, sincerely aiming for some levity because this is ridiculous.

 

Scott groans and buries his head in the pillow for a moment, his hand clenching into a fist into the sheet that’s covering him from the waist down. (She’s honestly glad he’s not making gagging sounds.) 

“Okay, time for bed,” he announces. She looks at him when he shows his head again and tries a thing, tries to really look sexy and irresistable (maybe for the first time in her life), just to see if she can coax a reaction out of him, any reaction, just to spite him. 

 

When he sees what she’s doing, because of course he sees it, Scott puffs out a deep breath. 

“Tessa,” he chides and squints. Does that mean he finds her repulsive, yes or no?!

“What?” She asks him, feigning innocence.

“Stop it,” he says. “I mean it, cut it out. Don’t look at me like that, not in here.” He shifts where he lies and then trains his eyes on the ceiling. “Let’s just go to sleep, okay?”

 

“Shouldn’t we practice for the Newlywed Game tomorrow?” Tessa asks, not really because she thinks they should but because she needs a moment to try and analyse what he means by ‘ _not in here_ ’. She comes up blank. That could mean absolutely anything. And whatever it is, it wouldn’t change a thing, probably. Whether or not he finds her gross or might be into her physically after all (which he might be, yeah, because he’s a _guy_ )...it still doesn’t change that he doesn’t want to be with her. 

 

Or the last thirteen years would have looked a lot different. No matter how many moments they share, no matter how many times she has wondered and hoped, for him, none of it has ever been enough. Not enough to tip the scale in her favour, at least. And anyway, they have a mission and she has her own. _This_ is not what she came her for. She came here to win a million dollars working with her best friend. So maybe she should just stop trying to figure out anything else while they’re here. That’s probably best. 

 _Eyes on the prize,_ _Virtue_ , she tells herself.

 

“Pshhh, I’m not worried about that game,” Scott tells the ceiling confidently, disturbing her inner monologue. “We know _everything_ about each other.”

 

 _Not everything_ , she thinks, almost bitterly. But they don’t need to get into that now, so she flops to her back too, tells him goodnight and goes to sleep like he asked. Eventually.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ugh, Tessa has no idea. 
> 
> Also I know you want Scott's POV but that is not happening (yet, potentially). So we gotta watch her be a thick-head for a little while. 
> 
> BUT, if you want to know how Scott really feels, just come yell at me in the comments and I will tell you ;)


	4. You Must Understand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so...I have no idea why these chapters are always getting this long. I am very sorry we're actually closer to 11,5K here than 11K but I am very honoured to know that many of you actually read any last of those words.
> 
> Honoured as heck too, that KEL, KIM and fairwinds09 came through for me on this again as well (bless their hearts!!).
> 
> The middle section here is inspired by the wonderful fic **Let's Talk About Sex (Baby)** by peacefulboo and her writing partner C (which you can and should find here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15582978/chapters/36178023), you will know what it is once you get there. (@Peacefulboo, if you read this and you feel like it's too close to your story, please just shoot me a message or leave me a comment and I'll take it out of the chapter, no questions asked!)  
> 
> 
> Okay, without further ado...here it is. It was a b*tch to write but I hope you like it. I know it has a lot happening in it, I'm still happy to hear if you have favourite moments and if you do, which :) Let me know in the comments, if you like. But okay now, here we go.   
> 
> **Drumroll. And...showtime.**   
> 

Tessa starts off the first full day in Georgetown on the Cayman isles with an hour-long jog. It helps her feel a bit more awake after the little sleep she’s gotten, worrying and wondering about Scott and what half the things he does and says mean. She’s running circles in her mind while her feet run her back to the villa. She’s tired of her own bullshit, so she uses the privacy of the shower after to give herself a harsh talking to, the party line being: _Get it together, Virtue_. They’re business partners, that’s the reality. And all the fake stuff they have to do—she’ll take what she can get from that, still hoping to quench that unfortunate craving for him like she’d planned from the start. _Nothing’s changed_. She hums that mantra in her head over salad for lunch, watching and chatting with the other couples while Scott is out playing beach volleyball with Jeffrey, Justin, and Deric. Nothing changed last night, either. _He_ hasn’t changed. Not in seventeen years. And he won’t change now just because they’re suddenly forced to make out sometimes.

 

Today there is no making out happening anyway, mostly because the camera crew doesn’t get in until seven in the evening. That’s when Erica and Luke waltz in and bring the show host Hunter Crowe, a somewhat known heart-throb television actor, and introduce him with the words, “He’s here to make your significant others look bad.” 

 

Everybody laughs heartily, Bonnie and Kitty loudest of all. Scott looks peeved, which is the funniest thing ever to Tessa and she pokes him in the side to let him know as much.

“Jealous?” She teases and nods her head in Hunter’s direction.

“He looks like he’s photoshopped,” her best friend complains dramatically. “I’ll look like an idiot next to him. Let a guy live, maybe?”

“Aw, you look just fine,” Tessa reassures him lightly, taking his hand as Erica leads them to the garden gazebo where the team is setting up for filming the first challenge. 

 

Their producer keeps a tight ship, announcing that within the hour to sundown, every couple has ten “Newlywed” questions to get through, as well as Hunter’s intro and outro for the challenge. Since there will be no retakes because they need the sunset-light, they better all think long and hard about what they’ll say on camera before they open their mouths. Tessa can see the appropriate nerves on their competitors’ faces as they go into the game, one by one. Kaitlyn and Andrew are first and do okay, getting seven out of ten right, Jeffrey and Justin come after, acing six, the same as Bonnie and Kitty. Shana and Deric are right behind them...and get five and a half, which Tessa guesses is fair (seeing as Shana had said Deric’s favorite movie was ‘Back To The Future’ when it really was ‘Back To The Future _Two_ ’). And then it’s up to Tessa and Scott.

 

“Ready?” Scott mouths at her as they take their seats at the edge of the gazebo as the sun sets at their backs, their competition on bar stools opposite of them, and with Hunter on the side, flash cards in his hands and a bright grin on his face. 

“Born ready,” Tessa whispers to her fake boyfriend and plucks the little whiteboard from the stool designated for her, uncapping the marker clipped to the side to spring into action like a firefighter as soon as the first question is uttered.

 

Since Hunter had explained the rules at the start of the game (they are asked a question and have to write their answers on their individual boards and then reveal the answers at the same moment), as well as the fact that they are pressed for time with the sun setting, their host goes in quick, with no false polite introduction and tosses them right into the shallow end of the quiz. (He’s always started simple so far.)

 

“When’s Scott’s birthday?” Hunter asks and Tessa almost rolls her eyes. That’s laughably easy and when she reveals her answer, she’s obviously correct.

“Who of you is more likely to get into trouble with the law?” Hunter asks and Tessa chuckles, knowing before it happens that upon turning, both her and Scott’s boards will spell his name. Scott just accepts his fate with a shrug.

“It’s true,” he says easily.

 

The next four questions are hardly a challenge either: What is Scott afraid of? (Mascots, for no real reason but all the worse for it.) What is Tessa’s favourite music? (Oldies, obviously.) Who of them is more likely to sleep in and get to work late? (Tessa, since Scott is a morning person.) And then: ‘What is Tessa’s favourite baby name?’ (Which makes Tessa panic for a second but when they turn around their boards, he has scribbled ‘Talulah’ on his, which is what she’s put on hers. “But I vetoed that and always will,” he adds.) Tessa exhales on her laugh about that, relieved that they got it right and very surprised that he remembered the talk ages ago when she had told him about liking the name. And if they have gotten _this_ right, they’re probably untouchable. 

 

They’re not. 

 

“What is Tessa’s favourite food?” Hunter asks...and there is their first mistake.

“Poached eggs,” is what Tessa wrote. “Chocolate,” it says on Scott’s.

“What does that say?” Tessa leans forward, trying to decipher is squiggly handwriting. “Oh, chocolate. Yeah, definitely. I put poached eggs because I was thinking real meal.”

“That’s hilarious, eh?” Scott scoffs bemusedly and turns to the others. “Like, yeah, Tess. chocolate is ridiculous but if you wanna sit down for a real romantic meal with me—”

“It’s poached eggs,” Tessa finishes his sentence. “It’s about the only thing I can make, so. But yeah, chocolate is probably right.” 

“I do know you better than you know yourself,” Scott notes and Tessa can’t help but shrug a ‘yes’.

 

Hunter moves on quickly, after logging in the false answer. “Tessa, what’s the greatest gift Scott has ever given you?”

And this one is simple. They only take a bit longer to answer because it’s three words they have to put down and reveal to the cameras: ‘Bucket of rice.’

“Oh, it sounds like there’s a story there?” Hunter notes and gives Tessa an encouraging nod to tell it.

“Well, after my surgery, when it was pretty clear that I was not going to be able to have a career as a dancer, I was pretty down for a while,” she says. “And Scott has this saying from this athlete—”

“Marnie McBean,” he throws in.

“Yeah, her,” She says. “Who he quotes to all his students and quoted then to me, too. It’s this analogy that your life and your training is this bucket of rice. And whenever you have a bad day, you don’t take rice out but you’re not adding new rice, so it’s basically about realising what you have and putting work in, in order to add stuff to it.” 

 

Tessa looks up to see Luke waving his hands at her from behind the cameras. _Hurry_ , he’s communicating. _We’re losing the sunset light._ Tessa picks up the pace. “And so I was really quite...depressed about my life and then one day there’s a knock on my door and there’s no one there but this big bucket of rice and a note from Scott that just said ‘Look at how much rice you got, kiddo’ and it was just the sweetest thing ever.”

 

“Very smooth,” Hunter comments. “But we’ve got no time to linger. Scott, what would Tessa say is the last thing you had a big fight about?” 

Tessa ponders this for a second and then waits with bated breath to see if they match when she shows them their answer and they haven’t worded it the same but it’s apparent they mean the same thing.

‘Noodles,’ reads Scott’s answer while Tessa’s is: ‘pre-cooking penne’.

“Yeah, we were fighting about pre-cooking noodles for a casserole,” she explains, to make sure everybody knows they deserve that point.

“But that was like four months ago,” Scott notes. “We don’t really fight.”

“No, we don’t,” Tessa affirms.

“Usually we do agree, don’t we?” Scott reiterates and she just keeps nodding along.

 

“Last question,” Hunter announces. “Tessa, is Scott a boxers or briefs guy?”

That’s easy, Tessa thinks and in already celebrating 9 out of 10 points in her head when she shows her ‘briefs’ to their host but then Scott reveals his answer and it’s ‘boxers’. _Oh, no. No, that’s wrong_ , she thinks.

“Well, no I meant boxer briefs,” she hurries to say. “Is that a thing?”

“Yeah, that’s a thing,” Scott concedes, making a face. “I wear those to work...so five days out of six...she’s actually right.”

“Boxers are for the weekend,” Tessa says, feeling smart and quick on her feet for thinking of saying that.

“Boxers or nothing,” Scott one-ups her and winks for good-measure.

“Mostly nothing,” she decides, winking back and she thinks they’re good after all.

“Well, guys, that’s it,” Hunter announces. “You got, let’s make it eight and a half out of ten there, that currently puts you in the lead—and remember, the winners of this challenge get an exclusive, luxurious diving tour to explore the coral reef and swim with the sharks! Let’s see if Carly and Jim can top your score!”

 

They can’t. Heaven and hell, they can’t _at all._  

 

The other couple does so bad that after the third question, Tessa kind of starts to wonder if there is secretly more than one fake couple amongst them, because Jim really has no clue about his girlfriend at all. Out of the five questions asked about her life and preferences, he gets five wrong, including the name of the High School she graduated from, her favourite colour, the last thing she’s cooked for him, and the day of their anniversary. (He gets argumentative about that even, Erica making a cut-throat gesture at him from where she stands on the sidelines because they _don’t have time for that._ “We never really agreed on a date,” he argues and Tessa feels bad for him. He looks like he’s completely unraveling.)

 

At the end of it, Carly and Jim finish dead-last with two (three if you squint) right answers out of ten and there is an uneasy silence when they return to their bar stools among their peers as the camera crew flurries about them as fast as they can to get Hunter’s outro before the light is fully gone.

 

“Couples, you now have ten minutes now to discuss the game amongst yourselves,” Hunter announces, “And then each couple has to cast a vote on who the fake lovers among you are. The couple that has raised the most doubt, will be eliminated from the competition. If you and your partner have a difference of opinion...too bad, you’re gonna have to haggle it out amongst yourself and reach a unanimous vote. Your review time starts now.”

 

The review time _really_ starts twenty minutes later. Enough time for the three camera guys to go have a smoke and the lighting tech to set up the extra lights and flares to have the gazebo lit sufficiently for the murkier light now that the sun has gone, which he’ll be able to adjust as it gets darker and darker yet. It feels much later anyway, when they sit down again and talk through the challenge. At first, every couple kind of just reviews themselves and they all agree it was stressful. But then the conversation focuses on Carly and Jim and the feeling shifts considerably. Tessa can tell that nobody suspects Scott and her of being the fakes, because it’s obvious from the uneasy tension in the air, that it’s Carly and Jim, who don’t seem particularly together.

 

“I swear we’re a couple, guys,” Carly says, an edge of desperation in her voice. “We just had a blackout.”

“Yeah, totally, I know all that stuff,” Jim almost whines. “I just got nervous.”

“I don’t know,” Jeffrey says, his forehead in deep wrinkles as his eyebrows skeptically hike up to his sandy blonde, perfectly coiffed hairline. “That was kind of... _sad._ I mean how do you explain that you didn’t know where she went to school?”

“I...I just blacked out,” Jim says helplessly, raising his palms to the sky, begging for leniency. “I didn’t know her then.”

“Exactly,” Carly agrees vehemently, her voice tumbling into shrillness as she gets defensive and starts pointing fingers: “And Tessa didn’t know about Scott’s underwear, what about that? Who doesn’t know _that_ about their partner?!”

 

“She _did_ know, though,” Scott mutters and Tessa could kiss him for how unbothered and unimpressed it sounds. Like he’s not feeling called out at all. _Good, Scott, slay her_ , she thinks.

“Yeah, I’m not really sure you can compare how we did to how you did,” she says, matching his nonchalance, taking the slight bitchy tinge to her voice in stride.

“I agree,” Kaitlyn chimes in.

“Well, they’ve known each other since they were kids!” Carly huffs in frustration, like it’s all so unfair. (And Tessa supposes it is, since they truly are a couple, which they have to be, as Tessa knows for sure that her and Scott are not one. So it’s bitter. But they blew the challenge, so what is she to do about it then?! It’s not like she’ll say no to one million dollars because some strangers start to question their relationship…)

“Or maybe they’re a couple and you guys aren’t,” Kaitlyn says meanwhile, sounding very matter-of-fact and ‘sorry honey’-like. Tessa appreciates her very much in that moment.

 

Before Carly can say anything, Hunter calls time from behind them and then they rearrange again to film the elimination, Carly and Jim looking like they might get sick. And mad as hell at each other most of all. 

 

“Before we start on the nominations, it’s my pleasure to announce the winners of this challenge,” Hunter says, his perfect teeth shining in the stage lights and everybody already knows who won, because they’re leading by points. “It was a head to head between Tessa and Scott and Kaitlyn and Andrew, but the winners of this challenge, leading with eight and a half to seven points are...Tessa and Scott. Congratulations, you’re going to go on a romantic dive in the coral reefs!” Hunter pauses for applause and then they cut to get some ‘true to life happy reaction’ shots from Tessa and Scott. 

 

“But now for the hard truths,” Hunter declares ominously, about five minutes later when they’ve reset the scene. “Couples, please cast your votes! _What’s love got to do with it?_ ”

One by one, each pair names the couple they believe is the fraud and to no one’s surprise, Carly and Jim are named by everyone but Carly and Jim, who name Shana and Deric, simply for the fact that they got the second fewest points in the challenge.

 

“This means that our two bottom couples after this very first challenge are Shana and Deric and Carly and Jim,” Hunter announces at the end of it and then turns to the two couples, one camera on him and Hank and Greg swarming in close to pull the two bottom couples into a close-up. “You now each have 30 seconds for a final statement. Shana and Deric, you’re up first.”

 

“We know how it looked, trust us,” Deric says, his voice soft and appealing. “The truth is, there are still some things we’re learning about each other. Most of our relationship, we’ve only had an odd week together here or there. Going long distance for so long, there’s just a bunch of stuff you don’t know about what your partner does or likes while you aren’t together. But we know what’s in each other’s hearts. Ask me right now what I know about her character, her soul, and we’ll get eleven out of ten, I promise you.”

 

Tessa can’t help but coo at that a little, because how precious was that? She glances over at Scott for a moment but can see he’s already zeroed his attention in on Carly and Jim. He raises an eyebrow at the cadence of Carly’s voice when she starts speaking, making Tessa spin her head around to see if the face matches the sourness of her tone. (It does.)

“We _are_ a couple,” she insists hotly, not helping her case at all. “We’re the real deal. That’s all I can say. I honestly don’t know how anyone wouldn’t see that?!”

 

They don’t stand a chance after. There are four votes for Carly and Jim in the end and none for Shana and Deric. 

Which leads to Hunter finally surmising: “Carly and Jim, the other couples have decided: For you, love’s got nothing to do with it. This means that you are out of the competition.” 

 

Hank keeps his camera on them for an uncomfortably long time and then Erica calls cut. The tension snaps immediately, which is Carly’s cue to jump up and walk over to Erica to yap at her. It’s a very cringe-worthy ten minutes while the others sit around listening to Erica explain calmly but distinctly that those are the rules of the game. Carly, however, is so vehement in her insistence that it’s completely unfair and that they were promised a full week on the island and are now supposed to leave after just about one night, that Erica offers them an hotel room for the remainder of the week on the production’s dime. 

 

Tessa enjoys the disapproving side-glances of her fellow competitors almost as much as her silent communication with Scott that is entirely made up off judgy scoffs and rolling eyes. Carly and Jim barely stay for their reaction segment and then go straight to pack and are gone before the crew has packed up for the night.

 

Their rash and prissy exit is the main topic of conversation that night and long after they’re done with shooting. The five remaining couples sit together in the living room and trash-talk the eliminated pair for their poor form and Carly’s ridiculous outburst. 

“That was almost too easy,” is the last thing Tessa says to Scott in bed that night before she turns to her side to sleep. He just snickers in reply and she likes how petty it sounds. And fine, competition might bring out this not- so-charming side in both of them, but she’s wickedly happy to learn that they have this in common.

 

The next day starts grey and comparatively cold, the winds chasing clouds across the sky until mid-day when it clears, but it gives Tessa the chance to take a bubble bath and catch up on some reading, while Scott watches half a season of a baking competition on Netflix in bed next to her. Through their open windows, they can see the others cross through the yard occasionally and this time, Scott passes up on Jeff’s offer of a repeat beach-volleyball match, putting his hand on Tessa’s thigh to tell him he’s “good where he’s at but thanks.” That’s nice. It’s Tessa who leaves eventually, because they skipped breakfast and they’re both hungry.

 

In the fancy kitchen, she plunders the fridge for the one ingredient she actually knows how to work to her means and is happy to find a full carton of eggs in the back of the second compartment. She takes two of them out and sets water to heat on the stove, needing no more assistance as Andrew lights the gas up for her (because she’s never done _that_ in her life) and then prepares toast with avocado slices to go along with the eggs while the water starts boiling. In the meantime, Kaitlyn has dropped in on them and winds an arm around her boyfriend’s shoulder, playfully asking him why he never makes breakfast for her.

“Why make it, when I can order it, honey?” He asks her sweetly and kisses her on the cheek. “You deserve so much more than my lackluster PB-and-J’s.”

 

“Aww, baby,” Kaitlyn coos back at him like he’s a toddler and Tessa cracks an egg each into a cup as they cuddle, trying to control her face. Kaitlyn and Andrew are super nice, don’t get her wrong, but their incredibly loud lovey-dovey-ness is exhausting and at times more than a little bit annoying in its overbearing sweetness. Watching them feels like what your mouth tastes like after too much Diet Coke...and occasionally just as artificial. Surely no one can be this enamoured 24/7. But then again, each of the couples is probably playing up their togetherness to a considerable degree here, simply to ensure that nobody else doubts it.

It’s a good thing Tessa is too close to the noisily bubbling water to hear Kaitlyn and Andrew murmur some sweet nothings at each other at the kitchen island behind her. Because this way she doesn’t get distracted from the intricate task of poaching the eggs for her and Scott’s lunch. She stirs the water into what she likes to call a “sea tornado” with a vigour and then pours in one egg at a time, getting the speed and the set of the eggs just right and perfect. She arranges them easily on the plates of avocado toast and enjoys Kaitlyn’s wistful sigh at the sight of them as she carries them back to the hall to bring to her “boyfriend.”

 

“Tess, can you make me one of those, too?” Kaitlyn calls after her, unabashed and needy.

“Tomorrow,” Tessa promises and grins at her over her shoulder. “I can teach you how to make ‘em, too.”

“Teach her what?” Scott asks as Tessa rounds the corner back into their bedroom and she shows him their meal by way of explaining.

“Nobody will ever be able to do poached eggs like you do,” he says, making grabby hands for the plate and doesn’t even bother with the fork and knife she brought. He just plucks the toast right off of the ceramic and takes a large bite, getting runny egg yolk everywhere. Tessa chuckles as she watches him make a mess and primly cuts into her own eggs and toast with precision, careful to not let a bit of it spill onto the plate between bites.

 

When they’re done, Tessa puts their plates on her bedside table and takes stock of the state of Scott’s face, which should be classified as “toddler after feeding.” 

“Look at you,” she giggles, and reaches over to wipe some left-over yellow stuff from just below his bottom lip and he catches her wrist in his hand.

“I’m saving that for later,” he chides and she breaks into a guffaw.

“Yeah, alright,” she grins and lets go of him, getting up to return the dishes to the kitchen instead. “You go get dressed and cleaned up. Camera crew’s gonna be here in half an hour for whatever they’re gonna have us do today.”

“Aye, captain,” he says while giving her a mock-salute. His playfulness in combination with the sorry state of his personal hygiene, courtesy of her poached eggs smeared on his cheeks, is enough to set Tessa’s heart pitter-pattering softly, drowning out most of everything else. He’s such a dork. He’s _such_ a dork and she likes him _so much._ _God dammit._

 

Roughly forty-five minutes and a requested change into her bikini later, Tessa stands with the rest of the cast and crew in the shade of the patio where Luke and Erica have asked them to gather around for instructions for today’s schedule.

 

“Okay, folks. We’re gonna be shooting a little segment, a boys vs. girls thing in the broadest sense of the word,” Erica announces. “Basically, we’re gonna have the girls lounge at the pool and the guys playing pool in the game room in the guest condo. Now I know for you guys,” she pauses to talk at the two gay couples exclusively, “it’s annoying and nonsensical but you’re gonna have to choose which group you’ll join.” 

 

Jeffery groans and Erica nods at him sympathetically.

“Trust us, we’re well aware that it’s bordering on offensive,” she admits freely. “But we’re all going to television hell anyway, so rest assured that we’ll burn for our sins. Nonetheless...it’s TV and people like boxes and labels. So...Jeff and Justin, who will play pool, who will sit _by_ the pool?”

“I’ll go with the girls,” Jeffrey sighs.

“I’d say,” quips Justin and earns himself a bitchface from his boyfriend.

 

“I’m going with the guys,” Bonnie says, all-business. “Because my hair is like ten centimeters shorter. So obviously, I’m the butch one.”

“Thanks for understanding. And I’m sorry,” Luke pipes in, himself obviously not too pleased with the way gay couples face this need to take on male and female parts in their relationships in order for the broader audience to _get_ it. “One of these days we won’t have to do it like this anymore.”

“Nevermind,” Kitty shrugs. “It’s not like we’re not used to it.”

“Very well,” Erica smiles and claps her hands together. “Take ten while we set up and then we’ll get started on this.”

 

The girls, artfully arranged on their lounge chairs by the pool, are supposed to each talk for a time about their significant others, much like the guys are too, Tessa supposes. This is going to serve as “a more in-depth introduction to each of the remaining couples in episode two,” as Erica informs them. Greg and Marv, the fourth camera guy beside Hank and Alexander, are filming them and Tessa feels a little bad for all the clothes they’re wearing. The sun has come out and she’s sweating even in her skimpy, little bathing suit.

 

The conversation, despite the fact that they have been asked to have it, flows naturally and a short while in, Tessa finds herself genuinely interested in hearing about the way each of her peers sees their partner. It’s endlessly fascinating the way Shana talks about Deric like he hangs the moon for her every night, how amazed she still is by his dedication and faithfulness to her through five years of a long distance relationship. It’s equally endearing to listen to Kitty describe in great detail how hard Bonnie works at her accounting firm every day, having had to overcome terrible anxiety and PTSD in her late teens from a drugstore robbery she got into through a freak coincidence. 

 

Kaitlyn waxes poetically about Andrew and the words “he’s the best man in the whole world, he makes me so happy I cry every night” actually leave her mouth. Tessa nods at that, smiling and thinking ‘Sure, you do.’ She encourages this, asking some follow-up questions for the simple reason that the thicker Kaitlyn lays it on, the more the others might start to question the sincerity of it, too. After all, if you tell someone how much you completely, crazily, insanely, mushy-wooshily love them every single day for the most mundane and dull reasons, it loses pretty much all its weight. But bless her anyway. Given that Tessa knows who the fake couple is, in a certain light it’s adorable how smitten Kaitlyn is. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s _kinda_ annoying to be told about it all day. 

 

When the torch passes to Tessa, it’s Kitty who hands it to her.

“So, Tess, what’s Scott like?” She asks, leaning forward on her deck chair to see Tessa better across Kaitlyn and Shana’s chests. “He seems like a ham and a half.”

“Oh, he is,” Tessa assures her. “He’s a really funny guy. It’s quite tragic that after seventeen years I still find him hilarious. He still cracks me up every day. But he’s also so sweet and supportive.” Tessa takes a breath, thinks she’s done, but then finds that she has more to say...and maybe she sounds like Kaitlyn for a second there but she doesn’t care. She’s never really said nice things about Scott before (because that usually invites too much scrutiny from her friends and family that she does not want to deal with), so now that she’s started, it’s a bit hard to stop. 

 

“He’s super generous and kind,” she continues. “He does so much for his community. But he’s also very fiery, you know, _passionate._ ”

“Nice,” Kaitlyn says beside her and flips to her side to look at the other woman. “So, like, between the sheets, too?” 

 

(Okay, why are they talking about sex now?! They had not talked about it for anybody else? Is this a weird joke? Or just fate kicking her in the shin? That the person on this deck who actually can’t speak on matters of the flesh regarding her “partner” is now supposed to? How is that fair?!)

 

Tessa flails a little inwardly, trying to create a quick strategy of how to deal with this. What does she know about what Scott is like between the sheets? Lord knows, she doesn’t have the slightest idea and not for the lack of interest. _So what do I do?_ She asks herself. And decides quickly that bullshitting is her only viable course of action. Just go off on assumptions and hope for the best. What other choice does she have, really?

 

“Um...well, yeah,” she stammers and makes the rest up as she goes along. “He’s got a lot of energy, let’s put it like that.”

“Ugh, I wish,” Shana groans. “Deric is like…” The woman illustrates her words by flopping around to her back from where she had leaned on her elbow before and puts all four limbs out, so she looks like a bug on its back. Then she drops her voice to pretend she’s her boyfriend and growls: “‘You do your thing, babe’.” 

“That sounds sad,” muses Kitty. “Can we help you?”

“No, no,” Shana hurries, a brief flash of panic darting across her features, like she just heard how her words sounded. “I mean, it’s not bad, you know, but he’s just not very...dominant. He likes being ordered around.”

 

“That’s me,” Tessa says, unthinking and generally speaking. “With us,” she adds, more for herself than for the others, to remind herself that she is currently making up her and Scott’s sex life. “I like when he just...grabs me and tells me what he wants and gets it, you know. Like, hair-pulling and biting and stuff.” (That particular sound-bite won’t make the cut later on because, well, 8PM broadcasting slot and everything.) “He’s never harsh or disrespectful or anything but he...uh, you know...he…”

 

Tessa is swimming, unsure how she got here or how to get out, only aware that she suddenly got very open and potentially a little bit vulgar and definitely a _lot_ private and tries to rectify that letting the rest of the sentence turn into a somewhat spastic gesture. She realises as it’s happening that she’s still illustrating pretty obviously that he likes to _fuck_ her good and thorough. 

“Ugh, sorry, Mom,” she says into vaguely Greg’s direction and hopes that maybe they will cut out that last bit too. (They don’t and two weeks later at the Ilderton fire-station group-watch of the second episode, that’s the very scene Kate and Alma start drinking to as the rest of the audience hoots and laughs.)

 

“Andrew is super romantic,” Kaitlyn supplies at the poolside, sounding like her boyfriend’s sweet streak is in opposition to Scott’s 'rough fucking'. Which Tessa does not appreciate.

“Scott is too, that’s not what I meant,” she says intently. “He’s _super_ sappy and attentive in every area.” She shrugs. “But he’s also a very passionate guy.”

“Yeah, I get that from him,” Kaitlyn nods and then turns to ask Jeffrey a round of questions because he hasn’t shared anything yet...and Tessa is glad to move on. 

 

 _Jesus Christ on a pogo stick, that was a ride._ She’s not all the way sure why or how she got such details about her and Scott’s non-existent sexual exploits but now that she has devoted some brain power to imagine it, it makes listening to Jeffrey gush about Justin a lot harder than it ought to be. Truthfully, she’s distracted all the way to the end of the shoot and even still when Erica takes her to the side and tells her that as soon as the guys are done, Scott and her are going to be taken to the Georgetown main beach to go on their reef dive. 

 

Tessa is distracted _still_ , when she sits in the production SUV with Scott on their way to the beach. His proximity, while she wonders how much of what she’s made up about his preferences in bed is true, is not helping at all with her lack of focus on the task at hand. Which is to appear like a sane member of society that can be trusted to learn how to scuba dive in under an hour.

 

“If a shark eats me, will you miss me?” He asks her when they are already out in a boat over the reef, dressed in neoprene suits being instructed on how to breathe through the mouthpiece attached to their oxygen-tanks, and it’s the first time she comes out of her head again.

“Babe, the reef sharks are so tiny, _you_ could eat _them_ ,” she tells him because apparently she _had_ been paying a bit of attention to the speech their diving instructor just gave them three minutes ago (while in Scott’s head it probably went a bit like this: ‘Sharks, sharks, sharks, sharks!!!!’).

“Let’s say they were huge,” Scott suggests and she knows he’s being cute for the camera because Greg is filming their whole preparation phase.

“Yeah, I’d miss you,” she says accordingly, humouring him. “Don’t get eaten, please.”

A couple of minutes later, they are all set to go and Greg hands Tessa a Go-Pro on a stick so she can film underwater while he and Marv get their waterproof-cameras to film Tessa and Scott as they explore the reef. 

 

And boy, do they ever explore. Scott gets antsy, even underwater, because the 40 minute crash course in diving is too long for his taste. Tessa can tell by the speed with which he charges ahead once Ray, their instructor, finally gives them the go ahead to go chart their course for themselves. She has a hard time catching up with him, not as “surefooted” under water or at ease with the diving gear. It’s all very heavy and restricting, even in the water. There is a bit of a puddle at the bottom of her goggles which annoys her disproportionately and she is a bit anxious about making a mistake and accidentally drowning herself. But Scott, happy and natural as a clam, keeps looking back at her over his shoulder, checking in and giving her the ‘alrighty’-hand-sign and so she swallows the lump of fear in her throat and follows him further down.

 

The reef is truly magical. Even two minutes in, it’s well worth taking the proverbial plunge to actually start taking stock of her surroundings instead of just staring at the black guiding rope set up there for inexperienced divers like it’s her line of breadcrumbs she can’t afford to lose. Everything glows around her, the corals, the fish that are flurrying past her head, swimming around her like she isn’t even there, Scott’s grin around the mouthpiece of his scuba gear. It’s all dazzlingly beautiful.

 

While Scott explores like an excited child and keeps pointing out especially noteworthy rock formations and fish-types out to her, Tessa allows herself to float for a bit. To enjoy the weightlessness in the water as her body gets used to the pressure of the diving gear and warms up to the temperature in her neoprene. She feels lighter by the minute, untethered, like she could be anyone down there and it’s glorious. The only thing that tops that delicious state of catharsis is the moment that they finally find the sharks. Even through all his armour and shielded from view by his gear as he is, Tessa can see Scott light up like a Christmas tree. He’s so giddy, it makes her eyes water beneath her goggles. She keeps the Go-Pro trained on him through all of it and wonders if at the end, she can ask for the footage. Surely they will show a bit of it on the show but she thinks his Mom would appreciate having all of it (and so would Tessa, if she’s honest).

 

All in all, they spent a good 90 minutes underwater before they come back up and climb back onto their boat, exhausted but blissfully happy. Scott is talking a new ear into Ray’s skull, going on and on about the last shark they encountered that was so much bigger than the rest. 

“That was Big Louis,” Ray tells him patiently. “She’s a girl but Big Louis still fits her best.”

“She was really big, huh?” Scott says to Tessa, turning to her to involve her in the conversation as they are taking off their tanks. “I got a little nervous.”

“I saw,” Tessa chuckles because she did.

“You weren’t worried at all about it?” Scott asks her, working his feet out of his fins.

“You’d have hit her on the nose if she got too close to me,” she shrugs easily.

“Fair,” Scott says the same time that Ray protests: “She would have never attacked you. She’s a super chill shark. They get a really bad rap because of the movies but they’re such gentle creatures usually. Way less of jerks than dolphins are actually.”

 

Ray sounds like he’s about to go on a tangent about the jerk-levels of various marine animals when Greg holds up a hand and interjects, gesturing at Tessa and Scott.

“Sorry to interrupt but can you two dry off for a sec so we can mic you for the instant reactions?”

“There’s towels downstairs in the boat,” Ray offers and as soon as they follow his suggestion and start moving towards the inside of the vessel, he starts lecturing Greg and Hank about how shitty dolphins actually behave on occasion. 

 

Inside, it’s the first time since that morning that Scott and her have a moment of privacy and because of that, Tessa holds him back by the arm after he half-heartedly dabs himself off and is already on the turn to go back.

“Wait,” she says and takes a deep breath to steady herself when he does. _Just tell him, Tess_ , she thinks. _It needs to be said._ He makes a face at her, as if to say: "Out with it, I ain't got all day."

 _U_ _gh, fine._

“So I should tell you that I talked on national television about how you are in bed," she says, ripping the proverbial bandaid off. "Or will be talking about it when it airs. I mean...when we shot the pool segment earlier...I talked about our fake sex-life. Just so you know.”

“Sorry, what?” Scott asks and stands frozen just in front of the door like he’s just been a million years away from thinking about stuff like their pretend sex life (good thing Tessa has been thinking of little else all day now).

 

“Yeah, well,” Tessa sets out to elaborate, aiming to just tell him quickly so he’s aware of it and they can go back to Greg. “I got kinda steamrolled and suddenly we were talking about what kind of lover you are so...I made it up. Well, I went on assumptions. But if anybody asks you, we should probably match up answers.”

“They had you talk about what we do in bed at the pool?” Scott asks, looking gobsmacked and a bit scandalized.

“No, Kaitlyn asked,” Tessa tells him and he makes a face. 

“Okay.” And there is a pause as he processes. Until: “So, what am I like in bed?”

“Don’t laugh,” Tessa says, suddenly not so sure that this was a good idea after all. Of course he was bound to ask and he needs to know what she said, that was kind of the point in telling him...but does she have to? Can’t he just...watch it back? “I might be super off.” She looks away from him at the wood panelled cabin walls. “I just pulled it out of my ass.”

 

Judging by the startled look on his face that wasn’t the best phrasing.

 

“Interesting word choice in context,” he says dryly, raising an eyebrow, pleased with himself, obviously feeling very clever making fun of her. The smug asshole.

“Scott!” She hisses sharply and throws her towel at him in retaliation for calling her out on the involuntary innuendo. “I didn’t say you liked _that_. Do you like that?!”

“I don’t know,” he shrugs. “Never tried it.” 

 

“Well, anyway,” she continues, hoping to leave this leg of the conversation behind and fast. “I said that you’re very passionate.”

“That’s fair,” Scott provides helpfully.

“And that you usually take the lead,” she goes on and chances a look at him. “And I’m more submissive.” He tilts his head at her, eyes going marginally wider. “Mostly because that’s true. I mean, true for me.”

“Ah-huh,” he exhales and it sounds like that was the last of his breath. “Go on. What else did you tell ‘em?”

 

“I said there’s hair-pulling and biting,” she adds, slowly, and a bit embarrassed. “But that you never hurt me or anything...but basically we go hard.” A little more embarrassed, enough to look at her hands again. “And you’ve got, you know...energy and, like, _stamina._ Was that okay?”

Scott is silent as a grave which lends itself perfectly for filling the quiet with her nerves and freak out a little. _God_ , did she completely overstep? Did she paint him like a nasty pervert who likes to manhandle women and he hates that thought? And why did she do that anyway, huh? Because it turns _her_ on? How selfish. That’s not a good enough reason to make stuff like that up about someone who might not be okay with it and put it out there on a recording for prosperity. _Oh dear God_ , she’s the worst person in the world. What if he’s mad at her now?

 

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said all that for the cameras, probably,” she sputters hurriedly and looks at him only because she thinks apologies should be made while looking someone in the eye for them to mean anything. His are unreadable. Eventually though, after Tessa ages 87 years, he shakes his head, ever so slightly.

“No. I mean...that’s very flattering,” he says and almost smiles. “Pretty high expectations.” (Wait, expectations for what? For her? Does he mean…? He has high expectations to fulfill for her now now? As in he will try to?)  “...For the future,” he goes on. “With whoever comes next and sees the show, you know.” (Ah, yes. _Whoever comes next_...very likely Jess again. But then, _she_ already knows what Scott is like in bed. Unlike Tessa.)

 

“Sure,” she says, forcing herself to look at him and act like this is not an awkward conversation. “But, now you know, so if anybody asks—”

“I’d have said that anyway,” Scott cuts in, holding her gaze. “You’re pretty spot on. About everything.”

“Oh. Cool,” it escapes her. Whatever else is she supposed to say to that? “Cool, cool, cool. That’s...cool. I guessed right.” (Probably not that.)

“And,” Scott starts, blinks at her, swallows and then continues, “in case anybody asks...you like being ordered around a little bit?” 

 

Oh. Okay. She can answer that, right? No harm in that. Quid pro quo, so to speak.

 

“Yeah, kind of,” she replies. “I like being told what to do. Then I can’t mess anything up.”

“Tessa,” is all he rasps for a reply and she is intrigued as to what warranted the use of her full name, what would have come on the other end of that sentence but then a sharp knock bursts into their bubble, making them almost physically jump apart.

 

“Guys, you about ready?” Greg’s voice blares through the thin hard plastic door separating them from their camera guy. “We just got killer light!”

Just like that, the topic at hand is dropped and Tessa isn’t sure that she ever wants it to be brought up again. But then of course it will be, because she really can’t catch a break there, can she?

 

“Today was awesome, huh?” Scott asks her that night as they settle into bed. After the dive, they got taken back home and spent the evening eating spinach salad and watching _The Princess Bride_ in the TV room with Jeffrey and Justin and not much else. But they’re both exhausted from the exertions of the day and the explorations of the crystal blue seas surrounding their islands. It’s a good kind of tired though, the kind that is earned and falls onto you all nice and warm, like an embrace. 

“Yeah,” Tessa hums, contentedly.

“Those _sharks_!” He sighs, lost in happy reminiscing. “Sorry, I’m still geeking out.”

“That’s fine,” she smiles. “It’s cute.”

 

He hums. And then is quiet for awhile before taking a deep, rattling breath and turns around to look at her. “Okay, so I have a follow-up question from earlier,” he begins. “But I don’t know if that’s a can of worms we wanna open tonight. If that would be... _smart_.”

Something about that last word triggers something in her, low in her gut, but she can’t quite put her finger on why it does. 

“Try me?” She says on a shallow breath.

“Is it okay if we talk about,” he pauses. “Sex? In general. Or is that weird?”

“Is that the question?” She asks him and the king sized bed feels a lot smaller and he much, much closer suddenly.

“That’s the question before the question,” he replies. _Okay._ “We never really...talked about that stuff before, eh?”

 

“It wasn’t necessary, was it? But yeah, I guess it’s okay,” she muses, trying to get some more oxygen into her brain. She feels a little light-headed. And sweaty. Her light cotton pyjama shorts and T-Shirt feels like chainmail on her, smothering and too hot. “For the competition, it’s probably best, even. So...what do you wanna know?”

“Okay, well. So, you said you’re kind of submissive, right?” He angles in. “Exactly...how, um, submissive would you say you are?”

“Are you asking if I’m into S and M?” Is that what he’s doing?

“No?” He says but it sounds like a question, too. “I don’t know…maybe?”

 

“Honestly, I have no idea,” she answers sincerely and focuses on the rim of the lampshade at the ceiling above her, very glad that they have already turned the lights off so he can’t see how she violently blushes in the dark. “I never trusted anyone enough to...go anywhere beyond getting, like, spanked or something.”

“You like getting...,” he stops again and then his voice drops to a strangled whisper. “Spanked?”

“On occasion,” she replies and then he goes so quiet for so long, she thinks he might’ve had a stroke. “Are _you_ into S and M?” She asks, just to see if he’ll still answer because she doesn’t dare to look at him to check if he’s still breathing. “Or, are you like, really kinky? Do you let them call you ‘Daddy’?”

 

“No,” he mutters. So he’s still there. “That’s...not for me. But ‘sir’, sometimes, maybe, I think, would be nice.” He’s still watching her, she can feel it prickle her skin. “I’ve never asked anybody to do it, though.”

“Sir,” she repeats, rolling the word down her tongue. “That’s better than _Daddy._ ” She never understood that ‘Daddy’ thing. Which is not to say she wouldn’t call him that if he wanted her to. Not that she has given this much thought or anything.

“Yeah,” he says, like he’s miles away.

 

“Like, they’d go: Please, sir, can I touch you? Or something?” She has no idea why she keeps talking, only that she kind of likes the way it feels to be talking to him about this stuff. To hear the way he sounds when he answers, all short of breath and trembling. It makes her feel fuzzy and warm low in her belly and she’s a little too self-indulgent to stop right now.

“Please sir, can I touch _myself_ ,” he offers by way of answering her question and it makes a jolt of punctuated heat shoot right down into her toes, pausing to pool in some other places, all sharp, throbbing edges. “That kind of thing.”

“Oh,” she says, swallows hard and realises that she sounds pretty much exactly like him now. “Alright.”

 

“Too kinky?” He asks after she’s been quiet for a while, trying to not do anything stupid like wince as her body reacts to some very graphic, very unbidden images involving him and _especially_ him watching her touch herself while calling him ‘Sir.’

“No,” she says and scrambles for a better answer. “Just...I’m cataloguing this.”

“What for?” He asks.

“To have a comprehensive picture of you,” she shrugs, making a veritable effort at nonchalance. “I should have asked you about _this_ stuff for twenty questions.” (For all the times she had impromptu interviewed him on long car rides with her own version of “Inside the Actors Studio—only with Scott”, she had never thought or dared to ask him about what he liked in bed.)

 

“Ha,” he perks up and for a second she thinks that she’s overstayed her welcome on the topic. But then it seems like Scott isn’t that eager to move on yet, either. “Do you want to know anything else?” He murmurs. “For the profile?”

“What’s your favourite part of sex?” She blurts out quickly, before he can change his mind.

“Oh, good question. I think it’s a tie. Between just before actually having sex and like, a little ways in when there’s this moment when you just look at each other like, ‘Yeah, this is happening, we’re pretty close now’.” She can hear him think for a second before he adds: “I like being close.” 

(She wonders briefly what he means, if it’s physical closeness that he’s after, pressing up close chest to chest and skin to skin...or if he likes to dangle on the precipice of release, edging closer but not quite getting there until it blows his mind. She chooses to believe it’s both those things.)

“And just before?” She asks, trying to keep him talking.

“Just before is exciting,” he replies. “The build-up. I like that tension, the anticipation, you know? Like...when you feel like you’re gonna crack open from wanting the other person so much...You?” 

 

She’s having such a hard time processing how his words are making her feel exactly what he describes. She’s so hot and bothered (enough to maybe snap and do something truly stupid), that she doesn’t filter herself at all before she answers.

 

“For me it’s the first moment when, you know,” and this is when she stops herself and finds she very much _should_ have filtered her thoughts before, because she ends up finishing the sentence with: “When the thingie goes in.”

Instantaneously, Scott blares out a hollering laugh that is much, much, much too loud for the tense intimacy that has fallen over them, much too violent for the soft blue shadows gliding gently up and down the walls, and she thinks they’re actually shuddering, like the bed does under his cackling.

 

“ _When the thingie goes in_?!” He repeats, hysterical, and all the sensuality is gone like it’s been slapped off. “Are you kidding me?! Come on, T. You’re twenty-four years old, you can say it.” 

“It’s crude to say,” she whines defensively. 

“The moment when the guy’s cock thrusts inside you for the first time, that moment,” he says shamelessly (and maybe the sensuality isn’t all the way gone, fine.) “There you go. Said it for you, didn’t turn to dust.”

“I would never say _that_ ,” she breathes, scandalized, ridiculously turned on but too shy and too frigid (is that the word, she has no idea) to say it.

“Cock,” he says.

“Stop it,” she orders, cringing. He just keeps laughing at her.

 

“You’re ridiculous,” he wheezes. “It’s just a word. Fear of a word only increases fear of the thing itself, T.”

“You’re not getting me to say dirty words with Harry Potter references, Moir,” she says and she hopes he hears the eyeroll. (Although she must give him some small props for working in Harry Potter, because she _does_ love Harry Potter.)

“Come on, Tess. Just try it,” he teases and a sharp finger lands in her side, making her jump a little. “Say ‘cock’, just once and then you can sleep knowing you’ve grown up a bit today.”

“No,” she insists.

“Say ‘cock’,” he insists, too.

 

“Go to sleep, Scott,” she groans and tries to duck away from his finger which just keeps prodding her in the side, tickling her.

“Cock!” He repeats mercilessly.

“Shut _up_ ,” she begs.

“Cock, cock, cock, cock, cock,” he chants and scoots closer until finally, he adds his head to his poking fingers and rubs it into the crook of her neck and against her chest like he’s a stubborn kitten while she erratically tries to get away from him. 

 

But he doesn’t let off. He teases and tickles her relentlessly. She giggles because he’s being silly and she’s ticklish and they’re playing like children and he laughs like he’s delirious and she joins in because she’s delirious too. She laughs so hard, she thinks she might pee. Right up to the point where he has worked her half-under him and stops short. His sudden stillness and the silence of it hits her like a ton of bricks. Right in the groin. _Wowza._

 

He’s panting above her, short of breath and flushed, and if nothing else between them has ever been a moment, this one is. Tessa is petrified, lying beneath him with her heart frozen solid in her chest. A while into the eternity of the next couple of seconds, Scott clears his throat.

“Um, I’m gonna grab some water in the kitchen,” he says like he’s just run a marathon. “You need anything?”

“No,” she shakes her head dumbly. “I think I just need to sleep now.”

“Yeah, yeah, okay,” he says and climbs off of her. “Sleep tight.” And then he gives her an awkward high-five and ducks out of the room. 

 

By the time he gets back, Tessa feels so weird, she pretends to be asleep. 

 

The next day, they act like nothing has happened. It’s an off-day and the production has set up a tennis workshop at the nearby courts for all the couples. So they learn how to play tennis, go back home eventually, have dinner together, and are Tessa and Scott plus mildly more touching than usual. Tessa counts five kisses over the span of the day, each curt and peck-ish, no tongue and no passion anywhere to be found. But it seems that whenever she turns, he’s been looking at her for a while. He’s watching her and she knows it, but she’s not sure what to make of it.

 

For evening entertainment, Kaitlyn suggests playing _Werewolf_ , which is a card game that’s remarkably like their show, because by drawing a card, two people in the group become werewolves and then have to conspire together to be the last ones standing and “kill” everyone else. Anybody who drew a human card has to try and snuff out the wolves to save their own skin. There is even a bottom two each round that need to plead for their lives in front of the villagers’ jury and might end up getting “executed” for being wolves if they suck at lying. 

 

Without needing to talk about it, Tessa signals to Scott that she will tank the game to make people believe she’s a bad liar. When by the end, Jeffrey exclaims “Wow, Tess, you can’t lie for shit, can you?” She is very pleased with herself. 

“No, I can,” she argues, trying for stubborn. “I _can_.”

“Haha, no, that was abysmal,” Andrew laughs.

Tessa throws Scott a very brief glance across the table and he smiles, just for the fraction of a second. This is going exactly as planned.

 

On Friday, they’re filming talking heads segments all day, and as Tessa and Scott sit together in their bedroom, their interview set, Harry and Sally style, Scott makes her laugh by ad-libbing on the lines they wrote for them until they’re both hoarse from laughing. Saturday is off, and the friendships in the house blossom despite the constant scrutiny between the couples. Scott plays some more beach volleyball in the yard with the guys, Tessa tries to teach a very learning-resistant Kaitlyn how to make poached eggs and starts a semi book-club with Shana because they’ve coincidentally brought the same novel to the island. It’s warm and pleasant, the constant breeze from the ocean making the heat bearable and the villa is a total dream. It’s an amazing week. Even if every night sleeping next to Scott is killing her a little bit and they haven’t really talked about anything meaningful since that night (since which she sometimes catches herself looking at him and thinking ‘Sir’), it’s still fine.

 

Beneath it all, they’re still Tessa and Scott. They’ve been best friends forever, they function as such. They laugh, they hang out, it’s simple. When she feels like it, she goes to cuddle him or kiss him on the corner of his mouth and when he feels like it, he kisses her back for real. It’s nice, commonplace. It’s not like that night, not constantly at least. And not as mind-bendingly tense and exciting...enticing, more than anything. Before Sunday night, that is.

 

On Sunday night, they film their celebrations for having made the first round. Erica has told them that the first cut of the first episode that will see Carly and Jim leave the competition (a fact that already seems like it happened months ago instead of days), has lacked a proper ending upon review, and that due to this, they have decided to end the episode with each of the couples quietly celebrating their moving on to the next round in various settings among the villa. The aim is to even further endear audiences to each and every pair. Tessa and Scott are assigned Greg (because she’s pretty sure they’re his favourite) and the hot tub, which is in the ground right next to the guest condo and has been bubbling happily away for them for a while now.

 

As the lights are being set for the night shoot, the other three units are filming Kaitlyn and Andrew in their bedroom, Shana and Deric on the beach and Jeffrey and Justin in the TV room while Bonnie and Kitty wait for a camera to free up and get them on their second floor balcony. It’s all super cheesy but Tessa isn’t complaining. There’s worse places to work than the hot tub. On Scott’s lap, which she later learns.

 

Greg is motioning them to get into the tub and Tessa eases into the warm water, letting it seep through her bones and relax her, leisurely watching Scott climb down into the pool with her, his grey swim trunks blackening as they get wet, her eye catching just for the fraction of a second on his private parts as he sits down.

“Okay, so, Scott, can you just sit there and Tess, can you sit on him, like face to face?” Greg says absentmindedly from where he lies on the ground because the pool is at ground level and he has to film them on his belly. “I’m just gonna get a little b-roll but I need a good angle, so I need you close together. You won’t be mic’ed but we’re gonna take the audio from the camera, so you can just talk to each other at a normal volume. About the experience and stuff. And that you’re looking forward to swimming with the sharks, because it’s “Tuesday” now, right?” He makes an effort at air-quotes for ‘Tuesday’ but it doesn’t really work with the camera propped on his shoulder. “Whatever, you know, just talk for awhile.”

 

And since that’s all the direction they seem to be getting, Tessa does as instructed and climbs on Scott’s lap.

“I don’t have you in the frame yet, Tess,” Greg mutters from behind the lens as Scott’s arms land on her hips under the water, the bubbles giving her goosebumps (or maybe that’s Scott, she’s not sure). “Can you sit a little closer?”

Tessa nods and follows the order, rocking closer against Scott’s stomach and inevitably, happens on, well, her good old friend, his semi-hard length, there. Her first instinct is to scoot back and apologise but then four fingernails dig into her skin on either side of her back and her head snaps around to lock eyes with her best friend. He swallows hard, squeezes her tighter. And Tessa stays right where she is. 

 

“So I just talk now?” She asks Greg, her eyes still on Scott’s.

“Yeah, don’t think too much about it,” their cameraman says.

“You excited for the sharks?” She asks Scott then, which is the first and possibly dumbest thing she can think of to say, but she’s not really coherent right now because of reasons. (Namely the fact that she is literally sitting on his dick that she can actually feel getting harder underneath her. And yeah, _this is happening_. How is this happening? And why isn’t she way more mortified?)

 

“Mostly excited to get to stay here for a while longer,” Scott touches her hair softly, looking up at her in a way that makes her forget Greg and the show and the villa and the lying and everything else she’s ever done, as her whole world folds in around them, leaving only Scott and her, in a jacuzzi at the end of the earth, all alone in the universe.

 

And then Scotts adjusts her position, pulling her closer so she sits firmly on him now, legs spread wide over his hips and his erection is trapped between them, just there at the apex of her thigh where she craves friction more than anything. She knows he’s been trying to rearrange her to get it out of the way but she’s not a big fan of that. So when Scott pulls her in by the hair to kiss her neck, which is just his cover to whisper “I’m sorry” in her ear, she rolls her hips into him slyly. As subtle as she can so that the camera doesn’t catch it but Scott will.

 

“It’s okay,” she whispers back and then leans out to kiss his cheek and then study him as a delicious wave of arousal clouds her mind in the best fucking way. 

“I’m glad we’re doing this together,” she says louder, as level as she can, purely for the sake of the camera’s mic.

“Me too,” Scott breathes, wonder in his eyes. “God, you’re so beautiful.” He shakes his head at her, in disbelief and something else she can’t quite name but likes on his face a lot. “Do I tell you that enough? You’re so fucking gorgeous...I’m so crazy about you.” His hands tug at her hips and she gasps, which earns her more fingernails, actually scratching her under the blanket of rumbling water. “Shit, T. I could...eat you alive.”

 

 _Fuck_ , she wishes he would. She is so game for whatever it is they’re doing, she doesn’t even mind when Scott seemingly snaps out of it. But then again, his hands are still clutching her tight as he turns to Greg to ask breathlessly: “You need more kissing or do you got enough of that?”

“Do whatever comes naturally,” Greg replies somewhere behind a curtain Tessa has pulled over the rest of the world. “The editors will choose what they want.”

Scott nods and turns his head back around to her and everything aside from his face blurs out into oblivion. 

 

“Come here,” he half-breathes, half-growls, and she kisses him before he can finish licking his lips. She tries to keep it as PG as she can, prying his lips open with her teeth, grinding on him hard but the first time they have to come up for air, she whispers into his mouth, hoping for some sort of effect on him that she hopes won’t be PG at all. 

“Yes, sir,” she whispers and his response is a growl so primal and lewd the camera catches it (they’re gonna cut that out in post production though, just like they’re gonna bleep out every time when she makes him curse under his breath). Yet, what the camera doesn’t catch (thank God), is how he thrusts up and against her _hard._ But Tessa does. _Hmmh, yes, God, yes_ , she does. 

 

So she keeps kissing him. Kissing and grinding and grinding and kissing and however stupid and borderline exhibitionist this is, she doesn’t give a flying fuck. She’s keyed up like nobody’s business, all the electricity that’s built up in her system since they got here that has had no outlet before discharging at once, making her twitch and shiver. The water around them is just adding to the sensation of the boundaries of her body breaking open and falling away. She’s pure energy now. She completely unravels beneath his hands. Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knows that this might be a bit too much...that maybe indulging in this level of intimacy with him might open a door inside her that she won’t be able to close. But with Scott pulling her down onto his hips again, she tells the back of her mind to kindly go to hell and leave her alone to _enjoy_ this.

 

Scott kisses her as if he never needs to come up for air again and he’s moving beneath her, chasing the closeness and the friction like he’s just as starved and needy for it as she is. It’s all a big crescendo and Tessa has to catch herself once or twice to keep from moaning, remembering that there is still a camera on her and this is not the blue hour on some crappy cable channel. It’s just that suddenly, it’s that much harder to hold on to her sanity. Because Scott’s legs tremble underneath her and his breathing sputters like an old engine, misfiring, falling over itself and he whimpers, so startled and suppressed it comes out more like a cough. 

 

She’s not sure but she thinks he might’ve just...there’s a possibility that he did...but, _did_ he?

 

Her eyes fly open to check in with him and he’s already there, waiting, looking startled, at once apologetic and embarrassed. Maybe he did. She isn’t sure. _If_ he did, it would make sense that he looks at her like he did something terrible but it’s alright. It happens. It’s a body-thing. He’s worried that she’ll read into it, but she won’t. She knows how it is. Bodies, male bodies especially, react to stimulation in a certain way. She knows it’s normal, that it isn’t personal. So she tries to put him at ease, leans in and kisses him softly on the forehead. The way he gazes at her after she pulls away is complete dumbstruck adoration. Like she’s done him a favour by reassuring him. _I’m not kidding myself here, Moir. I know how it is._ But it’s sweet that he keeps giving her that look, like she’s wondrous. Like she’s special.

 

(That look makes it into the final cut of the first episode, with much, much less of the kissing and none of the grinding. 

It’s the moment when, at the fire-station in Ilderton a couple weeks later, Alma grabs Kate’s hand where she sits beside her and gasps. 

“Oh boy,” she mutters and looks at her friend who stares back at her, wide eyed. 

“Is he…,” Kate asks, not daring to put the two big words out there because she knows that they only spell danger. Alma nods and looks shocked and also a little bit scared. 

“Yeah, I think he is,” she answers. 

“Oh boy,” Kate repeats uselessly. 

Yep, it sure looks like things are about to get a _whole lot_ more complicated for their lovely, clueless children now. And there’s nothing they can do but watch.)

 

“I think we’ve got enough, guys,” Greg says, barely audible from some three planets over. “Thanks.”

Tessa nods, sighs into herself and gingerly climbs off of Scott, her body buzzing and her mind once more in awe of how Scott manages to look at her like she’s everything he’s ever wanted, like he wants to take her to bed and have his way with her and then to City Hall to get married and never leave her side. And she knows in her heart that’s such total bullshit.

 

Honestly, it’s impressive how well he can act, startling even. Because none of the things she reads on his face he’s ever wanted to do, not in real life. And he never will.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you want to yell at me about this on twitter, please tag #whatslovefic because otherwise I will never find you and I want to find you!
> 
> I am still playing Easter egg hunt and request-a-scott-pov in the comments (you can ask about a specific moment or just hit me up for a general short POV). Just come at me, friends :)


	5. Ignore That It Means More Than That

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eternal thanks to the literal ROCKSTARS KIM, KEL and FAIRWINDS09...you are my life savers!
> 
> This is long, again, but since I heard no complains last time, here we go again. A lot happens in this. Most of it cute. Some of it a little daring, maybe. I am excited to hear your thoughts!
> 
> (I need to thank Kim not only for beta'ing but also for creating these wonderful gifs for me to give you a little visual for the story, I am living for these!!! I will try to work a little graphic magic into this wherever I can make time for it because I do love imagining this in detail and seeing it then, I hope you will humour me there) :D

****The night the second episode of _What’s Love Got To Do With It?!_ airs, the Ilderton Fire Station is bursting at the seams with people. To say that the first episode had made a big splash would be a drastic understatement. The whole country is buzzing with excitement about the Whodunnit-Fake-Love story and speculation throughout the nation is already running rampant about who the culprits are. Obviously, Kate and Alma know, just like the rest of the Ildertonians in attendance, but that doesn’t prevent people from gathering around the television they’ve set up to watch the episode air in real time and reacting with great fervour to everything Tessa and Scott do on the screen. 

 

The most interesting thing is how quiet it gets whenever their kids are shown “canoodling”, kissing or looking at each other in their interview segments, like the sun rises and sets in the other’s eyes. It’s then that Alma can sense heads snapping towards her and Kate; she can feel the stares and sense the questions no one dares to actually ask. (Questions like: “Are you sure your children aren’t sleeping with each other after all?”, “Why does Scott look at her like that?”, “Why is Tessa so out of breath after they kiss?” They’re questions she asks herself and isn’t sure she’s able to answer.)

 

At the beginning of episode two, though, there’s still clutter and commotion in the large garage, as chairs are pushed and pulled to the right places, beer bottles are uncapped, chips passed around, and the previous week’s developments are recapped on screen. After a brief “Last week on _What’s Love Got To Do With It?!_ ” featuring Tessa sitting on top of Scott in the hot tub, kissing him like it’s the beginning of a porno movie (oh boy), then Scott looking at her after the kiss, gazing at her like she’s made of sparkling diamonds (oh boy, oh boy), the intro plays: sunshine, a wide drone-shot of the villa and pop music.

 

Ten minutes into the episode, though, she isn’t quite sure how many more inquisitive sideway-glances she can take. She’s a little buzzed off the wine that Kate and she started sipping the moment Tessa apologized on screen to her mother for making a lewd gesture about what Alma muses is her youngest son’s sexual prowess (oh boy, oh boy, oh boy). Meanwhile, when they show Scott shooting billiard balls somewhat capably down the pool table in the guy’s segment of the ‘significant other’-talk up, he gazes off into space, frozen in his movements, as soon as he starts talking about Tessa. The words tumble from his lips like he can’t stop himself: “I’ve never met anyone like Tessa in my life, like I have this…,” he stops, considers and then goes on: “She’s such an unbelievable woman and she’s so, you know, I’ve never met someone so consistent.”

 

He gives up trying to shoot another ball and stands up to put the cue to the side, allowing his free hands to start fidgeting nervously. 

 

“She can get grumpy but that’s about it,” he continues, deep in thought. “She’ll never get past the grumpy stage. The thing with us is that we’re very, very sensitive so when she’s grumpy, I always think it’s my fault and when I’m a little... you know, I _do_ get to the angry stage and then she thinks it’s _her_ fault. But what she does is, she’s so consistent but still so passionate. I don’t quite understand how that works because my passion and emotion is always kind of a roller coaster ride but she brings this level of consistency and clear-headed thinking and she just smooths me right out. She has such a good handle on me. I know that sounds stupid but I need that so much. I’ve always needed that. She’s been through a lot with me, because I’m a handful...but she’s never given up. She always stayed, through all the crap I pulled in the last seventeen years. She balances me...and I need her. Like, I don’t think she realises that she keeps me alive.”

 

It’s very quiet in Ilderton then, like you could hear a pin drop. Which is mostly because Scott’s constantly commenting, taking-the-piss-friends have fallen completely silent where they sit some two rows behind Alma. 

“Woah,” she hears Adam mutter. “That shit just got real.” And didn’t it indeed? Alma doubts the strangers watching this will understand just how real it got, with Scott saying that. He’s never before, not once, said anything of this magnitude about any of his past girlfriends. The weird suspension of noise after Scott’s comments lasts pretty much until Tessa and Scott are shown getting their prize for winning the first challenge, and then Scott’s friends are back to talking loudly through every scene that features their friend, providing a slightly annoying (if still hilarious) running-commentary on her baby boy seeing sharks in real life for the first time ever. His boyish giddiness that comes through even when underwater and decked from head to toe in diving gear brings tears to her eyes. 

 

People are getting a little antsy over the commercial break before the challenge for the second episode is revealed, and there are even more murmurs and comments made once it does get announced. Which is hilarious because it isn’t like there haven’t been teasers aired all week about what it will be. They already know the challenge will be saccharine and cheesy as heck, but they still all react with coos and “awwww”s anyway. Like trained monkeys.

 

“Good morning couples,” Hunter, that TV-actor who is hosting the show, grins at the contestants all lined up in summer clothes in their extravagant living room, looking very sharp. “Today for the challenge of this week, I’d like you to follow me to the condo. I can only tell you so much: Joy awaits you, _bundles_ full of joy!”

 

The scene cuts to the group following after their host, passing by the stunning pool in the yard with the view of the ocean in all it’s turquoise, brightly saturated glory, and enter the guest condo—and sitting there on the pool table are five baby carriers with dolls in them. All of them are crying frantically with robotic voices.

 

“We walk in the room and there is so much screaming!” Scott says, the scene transitioning to one of his talking heads interviews.

 

 

“I was like...what is going on?” says the blonde girl in the next scene, the one with the rich boyfriend, Whatshername Weaver or something, and then they’re cutting back to the game room, the contestants pulling confused faces at the cacophony of tiny fake babies screaming their plastic heads off.

 

“Surprise!” the host yells, trying to be heard over the noise, looking smug. “This week’s challenge is all about family. For the first part of the challenge, you’re each becoming parents to one of these true-to-life newborn dolls. You are going to take care of them with all the love and care of real-life parents for twenty-four hours starting now! Your babies are like real life children and will occasionally start crying. And like with real kids, they can’t tell you what is wrong, so you’re going to have to figure out if what your baby needs is feeding, changing, or physical affection.”

 

Hunter takes a breath so that the contestants can follow his explanations, which is a good thing, Alma thinks, because she can hardly follow either. “Now, the dolls are actually highly intricate little machines that will record the way you interact with them,” Hunter continues after a moment. “If you get impatient and, let’s say, try and shake them, they will make note of that. If you let them scream for hours, they will make note of that, too. It will record how many tries you need to figure out what the problem is and how much time you devote to it when it is not crying for your attention. All this data will be used in your evaluation and will get you points to go into elimination with. The higher your score, the better. Couples, good luck!”

 

They show the couples each walking to their designated dolls and Tessa and Scott wind up with a bald, pale one in a pink jumper to indicate its gender. Kate’s daughter approaches the table with an expression of almost abject horror on her face, her voice-over sounding slightly rehearsed and scripted laid over it.

 

“So, we are getting our baby and I am already overwhelmed. I haven’t really thought about children yet, so I don’t know if I even _have_ a maternal side,” Tessa says and then she is on screen next to Scott, looking at him. “But Scott already has nieces and nephews, so he was a natural right from the start.”

 

 

“Tessa had to come around to it,” he shrugs beside her. “But I think she got into it pretty quickly.”

 

In Ilderton, nearly two weeks after this was filmed, people lean in expectantly, and as Alma watches them watch Scott and Tessa try and handle their assigned plastic baby, she wonders if they can tell that they are witnessing her son fall so much deeper into the hole he’s dug himself. Deeper than she thinks he’s capable of getting out of  once this is all over.

 

As it happens on the island, weeks before, Tessa for her part, has no idea about what Alma will see once the episode they’re shooting airs. She is too busy trying not to blow the challenge within the first few minutes by dropping the ‘baby’ or something. She and Scott and their ‘baby’ have been moved to the computer desk in one corner of the game room to get acquainted with the fake child and Greg hovers about while she prods at the artificial baby’s head, the skin made of some rubbery plastic that almost feels human. More than a little creeped out, she shudders from the uncanny sensation.

 

“This is ridiculous,” she says, turning to Scott who is eyeing her, looking vaguely amused.

“Oh, come on, T,” he chides.

“No, I mean it,” she tells him and adjusts her shirt slyly because her mic’s cord is tingling her between her breasts. “This is a doll. They want us to play with _dolls._ ”

“So? You gotta make it real,” Scott says and then moves to pick the ‘baby’ up from its resting place because it’s still crying loudly. He puts it against his chest and starts rocking it softly, obviously having guessed “physical affection” right because the doll stops screaming after five or six seconds of his attentions.

 

“But it’s not,” Tessa argues and studies the scene before her, all the other couples doing some variant of what Scott is doing, taking the dolls out of the carriers, prodding at them and starting to try and get them to stop crying. Over in the other corner, Kaitlyn has already started to undress theirs and by the couch, Kitty is hopelessly cradling their ‘baby’, seeming completely overwhelmed and stressed out by the task mere minutes in. Bonnie stands by much like Tessa and looks appalled, fiddling with the plastic bottle which she soon attempts to stick into the doll’s mouth (with little success). 

 

“Pretend,” Scott orders, snapping Tessa’s attention back to him. _You’re good at that_ , she thinks unbidden, and pushes the thought away. She doesn’t have time for this right now.

“We should name her, that’ll help,” Scott suggests, tilting his head so it nudges the fake baby’s face around to Tessa. “Anything but Talulah.”

“It’s a beautiful name,” Tessa says, rolling her eyes. Can he maybe cut it out? _Hall & Oates_, the movie night hopeful _Pride and Prejudice_ he never lets her watch, and now _Talulah:_ stuff he just won’t quit telling her he hates that she loves.

“It sounds like a disease, T,” Scott scoffs. “Wanna call her Tuberculosis instead? Go big or go home?”

“Very funny,” she deadpans.

 

“Look at her,” Scott says, ignoring her and turning the baby out for her to study. “What does she look like? A little Anna?”

“No, I don’t think so,” Tessa replies, humouring him.

“Cher,” Scott suggests and Tessa snorts.

“What?” she wheezes. “Why would we name our baby Cher?”

“I thought because you like Clueless,” Scott shrugs and she wonders why he is still holding the thing when it’s stopped crying already and the task is done for now.

“That’s a bit out there,” she comments his last name suggestion.

“Oh, yeah but Talulah is _totally_ commonplace,” he teases and raises the doll in his arms to get it even closer to her. “Name our baby, Tess.”

“Lea?” she tries, resisting the urge to flinch back. The thing is so creepy, she doesn’t know if she can get over it.

“Meh,” Scott says, unenthusiastic. 

“Calliope?”

“No,” he makes a face like she’s weird. (So she likes _Grey’s Anatomy_ , so sue her…)

“Caroline?”

“No.”

 

Tessa huffs in mild frustration, feeling Greg hover behind her shoulder and then moving around them to get them in one frame. 

“Ugh, well what do you want then?” Tessa asks her best friend, no acting necessary for her exasperation. “You can’t say no to everything.”

“Scott Junior,” Scott jokes.

“She’s a _girl_ ,” Tessa reminds him snippily.

“Gender is fluid,” Scott reminds _her_ , matching her tone.

“ _You’re_ fluid,” she mocks, sticking her tongue out at him. “But fine. Let’s go gender neutral then. Luca.”

“Hm,” Scott considers, looks like he’s turning the name over in his head. “Luca Moir. I like that.”

“Oh, she’s getting your last name, huh?” Tessa teases, feeling funny because honestly, this whole setup is ridiculous. 

“Luca Virtue-Moir is okay, too,” Scott shrugs and finally puts the baby back down into her carrier.

“No, just Moir is fine,” Tessa concedes with a smile. “Better for the Ildertonian acceptance.”

 

(Two weeks later in Ilderton, there is roaring applause at this line.)

 

“Any baby of ours is gonna be accepted in Ilderton no matter the last name,” Scott promises her and she thinks he’s right. Not even in their bullshit alternative universe, but in real life too. If in some strange world, Scott and her had a baby, his community would embrace him or her like they had embraced Tessa all those years ago.

“Well then Luca is all set for life,” Tessa says, giving up the fight and deciding to make an honest effort to act like this whole challenge isn’t equal parts totally strange and really dumb.

 

And then their plastic child starts yelling again.

“She thinks so too,” Scott says to Tessa and then reaches to get the doll back into his arms to comfort her, only this time Luca is not appeased until Scott has tried feeding her unsuccessfully and then laid her on her back on the desk, actually going so far as to spreading the changing pad on the surface so that their fake child doesn’t get cold or get non-existent dirty diaper contents on the slick designer furniture by accident.

“She gets this from your side of the family,” Scott quips as he starts unbuttoning Luca’s tiny pink jumper and gets to work on changing her quickly and efficiently.

 

“I don’t think I’ll ever be good at that,” Tessa mutters once he is done, hovering behind him as he puts the silent doll back into the carrier once more.

“How many times have you done it?” he asks her and Tessa is worried for a second that this is bad for their cover because probably he should know if they truly were a couple? But then again they _have_ known each other for seventeen years and it’s never came up before.

“None and a half, maybe?” she jokes, not even attempting to act like she has any idea about children.

“Woah, there, honestly? That’s a lifetime skill, T,” Scott teases her. “Next time, I’ll teach you.”

 

The next time happens when they have already divided into filming teams and Greg has moved Tessa and Scott and their fake daughter to the second TV and media room, which is fittingly called the “kids media room” in the villa’s floor plan. Scott tries rocking Luca at first, before he hands the doll to Tessa and goes for the diaper bag. He starts setting up the impromptu changing station on the floor next to the grey leather couch Tessa sits on, holding Luca gingerly until Scott is ready to take her again.

 

“Okay, look here,” he says once he puts the ‘baby’ on her back, then reaches for Tessa’s hand and pulls her down to sit beside him. “Most importantly, in case you’ve got the kid on an elevated surface to change, you always keep one hand on the baby, so it can’t roll off. If she’s on the floor, it’s fine. Just make sure there’s no small stuff lying around that she can put in her mouth and swallow. Those are choking hazards.”

 

He sounds all teacher-ish, all coaching-like, and it makes Tessa’s body hum all-over, which is a strange sensation. It feels like it does when someone braids her hair or does her makeup, all tingly and warm and being cared for. He’s taking his time to show her how something works that she doesn’t know about yet and there is something about it that makes her a little bit woozy. That makes her a little hot and bothered, even. Enough to completely ignore the crying robot voice of their artificial offspring. She scoots a little closer to him as he rummages around in the diaper bag, going step by step, wanting to be close, wanting to hear his voice carry over the noise like it does when she watches him coach at the rink sometimes.

 

“Next you get all of your stuff,” he continues. “Like the new diaper, the wipes and the creme and baby powder, like so.” He arranges it all neatly beside the motionless, little plastic body. “Then go see what you’re working with.” Scott undoes the jumper again and the diaper tags, too. “Let’s pretend this is a giant pile of baby poo,” he says, gesturing over the spotless diaper like he imagines a violent green-brownish Jackson Pollock there. (Tessa decides that her baby had spinach...but maybe she can’t have food like that yet? Can she? How old do kids need to be to be able to eat spinach? Tessa has no idea.)

“Let’s,” she agrees anyway and makes a face like she can smell the mess.

 

“You gotta lift the legs, like so,” Scott instructs and grabs Tessa’s hand from her knee, working her fingers around his to then pick up the doll by her ankles and hold both the firm plastic and her hand in his grip and uses his free hand to start maneuvering the diaper off. 

“Keep the legs high and take off the diaper with one hand, and try not to get shit everywhere when you close it up again,” Scott narrates as he executes the task. “Tape the thingies down and done.” 

He puts the ‘dirty’ diaper to the side, still helping her hold up the baby as he grabs a couple of baby wipes from the package by his feet. “Then wipe the butt. But see, this is important: For boys and girls, always wipe away from the sex, so there’s no chance of bacteria getting in there. Always away, that’s super important! And check the back for smears too and all the wrinkles, especially if you have a fat baby.”

 

Tessa laughs, imagining Scott with a really fat baby, sort of like a little infant Buddha. It’s a cute mental picture. 

“Okay, then put baby cream on, especially if there’s redness,” Scott goes on, undeterred by her giggles. “Put the new diaper under the butt like so and finish with generous amounts of baby powder.” He just pretends to put products on the doll, because production has told them to please not do that since cleaning the dolls is a pain because of their specially textured ‘skin’ covering. 

 

“Let the feet down softly,” Scott finishes his instructions, doing as he tells her. “Adjust the diaper in the front by pulling gently, close up with the tape, careful that it fits snugly but not too tight. Aaaand you’re done.”  He looks at her, grins, and then looks back at the finished project. The doll looks exactly as it did before but Tessa feels accomplished anyway, even if she didn’t do anything more than hold some legs. 

 

“Changed your first baby, T,” Scott remarks, as if she had done it herself. “I’m proud of you.” 

“Why are you so good at this?” she wonders instead of taking the compliment because she doesn’t feel like she deserves it. He shrugs at her.

“If it’s a real one I like doing it a lot actually,” he replies. “It’s like a really nice moment to bond. It’s just you and the kid and they’re all like ‘Ahhh, what is he doing with my legs there?’ And then, they’re, like ‘Niiiice, I’m not sitting around in my own pee anymore, thanks Uncle Scott.’ That’s awesome.”

He beams at her in remembrance of those moments and he looks so wholesome and pleased, she can’t really contain it in her chest. She knows Greg’s camera is still capturing every moment, so she has a good cover for leaning over, twinkling her eyes at Scott so he knows it’s coming, and kissing him softly on the lips. He kisses her back for a long, wonderful moment.

 

“I think we’re rocking this having a baby thing,” Scott murmurs after the kiss, still hovering close to her face and she thinks it’s so quiet they’re gonna have to put subtitles on the frame in post production. (They do.)

She hums an affirmation, not feeling like leaning out quite yet, and so she stays there a bit, close to his face, looking down on their doll and for the first time, she feels an odd sense of affection for it. Like the pretending she’s real is finally starting to work. Only that it doesn’t last longer than two o’clock in the morning. Because by then, the frigging thing has cried on the dot every three hours, apparently getting increasingly louder the later it gets, and Tessa has a mind to just rip the batteries out of the hellish robot and be done with it.

 

“Why??” she whines dramatically, rubbing her eyes with her knuckles in the dim light of her nightstand light, rocking the doll exasperatedly on her chest. “God, I hate this. Why the fuck do we have to do this at night, they aren’t even filming this,” she groans, almost louder than the doll’s frantic screeching. 

“Well, if they want to measure our data on how we’re dealing with them, they probably need the content...less than 24 hours with them probably doesn’t make for a very comprehensive evaluation.”

“Do you have to be so smart in the middle of the night?” she accuses him, only half-kidding. She stops herself from shaking the plastic baby, if only for the reason that they’ll know she did it come morning. “I never wanna have kids,” she declares, glaring daggers at the little monster.

 

“Come on, it’s different when they’re real and when they’re yours,” Scott hums, moving in closer to her and rubs his palm up and down her back soothingly.

“I haven’t slept a wink, Scott,” she complains. “I don’t care if that thing was real and mine, I hate it.”

“You really don’t want kids?” he asks her, his voice so low and raw it makes her turn to look at him. She finds something bare there, open enough to make her honest.

“No, I do,” she tells him. “Eventually. Just not right now. This is _exhausting._ ”

“Yeah, not yet,” Scott agrees, his hand still moving across her pyjama shirt. 

“It’s just...such a big thing, you know?” she muses. “You need to love someone a whole lot to get into _this_ with them.”

“Yeah,” he agrees absent-mindedly, turning his attention back to the fake baby and so she does, too.

 

“I don’t know if I’ll ever find someone like that,” she mutters, keeping the ‘ _unless it was with you_ ’-part of the sentence to herself.

“Someone you love enough to have babies with?” he asks and then his eyes are tracing her face once more.

“Or someone who loves _me_ enough,” she shrugs.

“Oh, I think you’ll be fine,” he breathes, sounding older than his years for once, his voice dropping so far into his throat. “You’re hard not to love.”

 

They’re looking at each other and once again, even though she swore to herself she would stop thinking about it, she wonders if he’s trying to tell her something after all. If maybe there’s a chance...but no. It’s no use. She’ll just drive herself crazy with this, she’s been here too many times in her life, she can’t keep doing it. He’s being a good, supportive friend. If Midori or Liz or Jordan told her this, she’d take it at face value, too. He’s just reassuring her that one day someone who is not him will come around and fall in love with her and be sure enough about it to go the distance. To take the plunge and start building a life, a family with her. It just won’t be him.

 

The fake baby keeps crying in Tessa’s arms but she barely hears it, she’s too enraptured in the stillness of his face and how it’s making his eyes look even wilder, like there’s a storm raging behind them. So when the baby hiccups and his head snaps around, she feels immediately stupid. Because he’s obviously been listening, his attention had been on the doll as he stared at her. He wasn’t looking at her at all, he was looking through her. 

“The sound is a bit different, eh?” Scott mutters and snags the doll from her arms cautiously, as if it was a real baby, breaking up whatever moment they obviously didn’t have there entirely. “She only does the hiccups when she’s hungry.” He scoots away from Tessa so he can lean against the headboard. “If you pass me the bottle I can feed the monster and you can just sleep a bit, okay? I got her when she wakes up again. I don’t want you to go all grumpasaurus in the morning.”

 

Tessa is a bit peeved at that but it doesn’t mean that come morning, he doesn’t turn out right. Because, yeah, of course she is grumpy. In spite of him doing the remainder of the work through the night, her sleep has still been light and patchy and when she meets Deric by the coffee maker in the AM, seeing the bleary-eyed frustration carved into his features is like looking into an unflattering mirror.

“How was your night?” Tessa asks him, adding a bit of milk and sugar to her mug-full of coffee.

“Terrible,” Deric groans, following her for his own serving of caffeine resurrection. “We barely slept. How do they get these dolls so loud?”

“And why did we have to go through this when they didn’t even film us?!” she blurts out.

Deric tilts his head at her: “But I thought they did? Didn’t Erica say they turned on the night-vision cams in the rooms just for last night?”

“What?” Tessa asks, suddenly running way hotter than the breeze coming in from outside should allow. “When did she say that?”

“Before she left. Come to think of it, I don’t even know if you were there for that, huh...” Deric answers and then laughs. “Why, did you get frisky in there last night?”

“What, no,” Tessa says, trying for nonchalance when in reality her brain is going a million miles a minute, remembering the things Scott and her had said to each other the night before, about her never finding someone to have kids with. To her pretend boyfriend. On tape now, apparently. “We just...I might have just shook the baby a bit,” she makes up as she goes, thinking that this would be sufficiently unfortunate to not want to have caught on camera. “When are we starting to shoot today?”

“Twelve, I think,” Deric replies. That leaves Tessa with an hour.

 

An hour to go find the security room and somehow delete the recording before the production company can find and air it to give their game away. This is not to say that she thinks they would but they _might._ And since at the end of this whole thing, Tessa and Scott have to get the country’s vote on their fake love, she better make those sound-bites disappear. She awkwardly clinks her mug against Deric’s and ducks away from him apologetically, careful not to look suspicious.

“Gotta take this to Scott,” she tells him, a little too high-pitched maybe, but still determined. “He was such a trooper last night.”

 

Tessa is mindful not to start running until she is safely around the corner, and then sprints the rest of the way to the room, spilling coffee carelessly left and right.

“Scott,” she exhales when she crashes into the room and he’s sitting there with his shirt off, in the boxers he slept in, balancing a mewling doll on his lap before raising it high, so he’s holding it under its stiff arms, pretending like he’s playing airplane with it. (And so apparently she just walked in on Scott actually playing with dolls at 25 years old.) He startles like he’s embarrassed but then actually apologises to the bundle of machinery in his hands. She has to roll her eyes before she can go on.

 

“We have a problem,” she announces eventually, setting the mug on the dresser to be forgotten about entirely. “You need to help me. Bring the baby.” When he doesn’t move she uses her whole body to gesture him to hurry up and move. “Just get over here, I’ll explain on the way.”

She does once he follows, cradling the doll to his body, walking deliberately, and this whole acting like the bunch of plastic and wires is real is getting a bit out of hand. Huffing, she takes him by the hand to get him to move faster while she gets close to describe the situation to him: that they might get made from their bedroom’s surveillance camera footage and that he needs to play lookout for her when she sneaks into the security room in the basement and takes care of it. Thankfully, he seems to understand and quickens his step accordingly. They race down the hall, careful not to step on the milky-brown splashes of coffee Tessa spilled onto the floor, and then try to act normal as they pass the living room where Jeffrey and Justin are ‘feeding’ their own doll and wave hello.

 

“How did you guys sleep?” Justin asks.

“Not great,” Scott sighs. “Kids, you know…”

“Yeah, we’re trying to walk it off,” Tessa adds and then turns her face into a cutesy apology and drags Scott on and into the foyer, where the staircase winds up onto the second floor and down into the basement. The whole time, she looks over her shoulder nervously, like they’re in a heist movie. She’s scared that Bonnie and Kitty might come down the stairs, afraid that their bare feet tapping on the marble floor are too loud, and terrified that the baby will start making dinosaur noises again as soon as Scott has taken his post at the security system monitoring room at the end of the dark, somewhat dusty hallway in the basement. It’s the last door on the right, just opposite of the laundry room and —of course— it’s locked.

 

Tessa panics a little and looks at Scott who is still clutching the stupid doll and shrugs, completely unhelpful. She growls at him in frustration and then improvises. It’s a standard lock, like the ones in her ballet school (the one every last one of the students eventually learned how to pick in order to get in there after hours and get some extra time at the barre in). Of course, it would be better to have something better to pick it with, but as it is, she has to make do with her bra and improvise. She feels Scott’s eyes on her even in the dim light as she unclasps the bra at her back underneath her sleep shirt, and then plucks the straps from her shoulders, enabling her to pull the whole thing from underneath her shirt. He’s still watching as she turns it over in her hands, brings one of the cups to her mouth and starts biting at the fabric to create a hole big enough to get the underwire out through.

 

“Yes!” she hisses in sharp triumph when it works, and she’s much quicker getting the second wire out. “Hold this,” she says to Scott and shoves the now ruined bra into his hands without looking to see if he even catches it. 

 

She’s got a job to do. She bites off the plastic endings on each of the wires and bends down to get to work. It’s difficult to see in the dim light and the carpet they’re standing on smells like feet, which is a bit distracting, but Tessa does her best, putting her back into it as she works one of the wires as her tension wrench into the biggest part of the hole in the lock. Next she bends it diligently into an L-shape, just like she’d learned so many years ago, when the only thing standing between her and being the best goddamn ballerina in school had been the stubbornly locked door to the studio. Once inside, she would diligently re-do all of her lessons by herself while the competition was sleeping. (She’d always went super early in the morning, like at three, four AM, because by five, she’d always get company.)

 

She puts the wrench into her mouth while she rhythmically bends the other one in half, from one side to the other, until it snaps and is content with the pick she’s just fashioned as the spare bit of it drops onto the fluffy carpet with no sound. Next, she shoves the tension wrench back into the keyway, pulls on it a little bit until she’s felt out the pressure points inside the lock and where it gives way. Then she keeps it in there and adds the pick, gingerly trying to unlock the door and failing to the first two tries because it’s so damn gloomy down there. She curses under her breath and then falls completely silent when she hears footsteps passing by the landing...but after an eternal moment, they fade. _Thank God._

 

Finally, on the third try, she manages to slide the pick all the way into the lock and then starts feeling for the stiff pins inside, wiggling the metal between her thumb and index finger until she has pushed them down one by one and all five of them are set. She takes the pick out, careful to not set a pin back accidentally and then takes a deep breath before turning the tension wrench and like the sweetest song, the lock clicks open and so does the door.

“Keep on the lookout,” she whispers, turning around to Scott.

 

The way he stares back at her is priceless. She instantly wishes she could frame it and keep it forever.

 

“What the _fuck_ , T?” he asks her, looking five and not just because of the doll in his clasp. “What the actual, everloving fuck?! Why did you never tell me you know how to do that?”

“It never came up,” she shrugs and tries to mask her smug joy at dumbfounding him by being the cooler one of them for _once_ in her life as cocky nonchalance, shrugs like it’s no thing, and ducks into the now unlocked room. 

 

Inside it’s stuffy and smelly, like old air and for some reason old paper too, even if there is none. The monitors of the security cameras all show the desaturated live footage of the various angles in the house and it doesn’t take long until Tessa has spotted the one that’s trained on their bed. She bends over the table the monitors are stacked on and goes to fiddle with the little buttons on the small TV. She has not a single clue how to work this thing but she tries anyway, pushing on the controls until apparently, she’s found the rewind button. She watches the lines appear on the video as it goes back in time, after a while coming up on just now, when they left the room after Tessa stormed in.

Then a hilarious amount of time that Scott plays with their fake baby like it’s a stuffed animal and the favourite one he owns at that. She’d like to watch that back just to cackle about it but she doesn’t. There’s no time. On the screen, it keeps going backward. Back until Tessa left, her getting out of bed, then her waking up. And then after some seconds, Tessa does pause, freezes the frame to make sure she isn’t imagining things when she sees Scott perk up onto his elbow beside her, obviously awake while she is asleep and...watching her? Is that what he’s doing?! 

 

She is tempted to investigate further, so very, very tempted, and she bites the inside of her cheeks regretfully when she decides that there’s no time. She makes a mental note to come back to this but after some more time rewinding and Scott handling the doll on his own, it slips her mind. Because there it is, the time when they talked in the middle of the night. She rewinds the tape a couple of seconds more and then hits play.

 

And exhales, long and hard. Fuck, yeah. There’s no audio. She checks every last button again to make sure but when she finds the sound on/sound off-button, it does nothing. These cameras just record images, not sound. So they’re good. All it shows is Scott comforting her, leaning against her frame to rub her back while she cradles their plastic child against her chest. _Huh_ , she thinks, pausing. Grainy and tiny as they look their on their bed in the dark, it’s not really obvious that the creature she’s holding is made of rubber and airbrush paint. Like this, it looks like they’re a real family. Like she and Scott have a baby.

 

It takes her a solid five seconds to deal with that image. And even after, she just sits there and stares at how Scott on the monitor keeps his hands on her...and then looks at her. And her breath stalls even now, even if they’re basically just tiny dots on a screen. She can feel the way his eyes burned into hers, just from watching it back. _Huh_ , _indeed._

“Tess?” comes a whisper from outside, ripping her out of her daze. “Are you about done?”

“Yeah,” she whispers back, regretfully hitting some of the buttons until the feed snaps back to the live feed (how, she really has no idea, but she doesn’t wait to question it) and then tiptoes back out of the room, pulling the door shut behind her. Glad for her foresight, she retrieves the pieces of her bra that she threw down on the floor and then nods at Scott to start moving.

 

“So?” he asks her as they make their way back, sure-footed now that their eyes are used to the dark. 

“We’re in the clear,” she says. “The cameras record without audio.”

“Okay, good,” Scott breathes and sounds about as relieved as she does, if not more so. “That’s really, really good.”

“Yeah,” Tessa nods. “And we’ve still got fifteen minutes till Erica and company get here. Pretty good for our first covert mission if I do say so myself.”

“Absolutely,” he agrees. “Enough time for me to take a shower. But you gotta get the baby when she cried. I’ll be a while...watching you pick that lock is pretty much the hottest thing I’ve ever seen. I need a minute.”

“Shut up,” she says and doesn’t need to see his face to know that he’s pulling her leg. “You dumb dork.”

 

Honestly, by the time their production team gets in, Tessa is still smiley and excited, riding the high of a heist-movie style intermezzo gone completely right and when Scott re-joins her, running late as per usual, he smells like body wash and conditioner and it only adds to her high spirits. When they finally film the lift of the fake-baby curse and collect the dolls, she’s actually almost sad to let Luca go. (Although she guesses it’s better they take her away now until Scott starts having actual pretend tea parties with his pretend baby.)

 

The other couples seem to have mixed feelings about the departure of their dolls as well, all except for Bonnie and Kitty, who look like they would have loved to tossed theirs from where they’re standing under the gazebo into the pool, if they could.  

 

“Couples,” Hunter starts once they have set up for him to announce the second part of the week’s challenge (and they haven’t been told beforehand what it is, much like yesterday, because the execs are looking for genuine reactions). “We have another surprise waiting for you...if you would kindly like to turn around and face the house, you’ll see why it was very good that you had a whole twenty-four hours to practice parenthood.”

They all turn on cue, as if it was choreography and there, in front of the house are five other couples, each one of them with a kid either on their arms or in their arms. And Tessa gasps.

“These parents are here today to get a couple of hours of quality-time together on their holiday while you _babysit_ their adorable offspring! You’ll be doing these Moms and Dad’s a big favour by taking their little ones off their hands for a while. I hope you’re up to the task because each of these couples will later evaluate your performance and also get a vote tomorrow at the elimination.”

 

Someone in the periphery yells “Cut!” and then the chattering starts. Jeffrey and Justin start babbling to each other all excited immediately, Kaitlyn coos and Kitty groans, sounding like it comes from the very bottom of her soul. On autopilot, Tessa grabs Scott’s hand. Now, that’s a surprise indeed. How on earth did they find five couples willing to put their babies on a reality show for strangers to watch?

 

“They made a post on their facebook page,” Gina, the mother that has been assigned to Tessa and Scott tells them a little while later, after they’ve all been paired up and introduced. “It all worked out pretty well and it’s a little more money for the vacation fund.” Her husband Dale shakes Scott’s hand and then adjusts the toddler he’s holding on his hip to give them a better view of his adorable daughter and says: “This is Marnie, she’s two and a half.”

 

“Hi, Marnie!” Tessa says, leaning forward a little so that the child can see her better. “We’re gonna be friends today, yeah?” The girl lowers her head a little, shyly turns into her Dad’s shoulder and she’s so cute, it nearly makes Tessa’s eyes wet. “Oh my God, she’s so precious,” she says to no one in particular.

“Very,” Gina agrees proudly. “But also very active. Once she’s used to you, she’ll run circles around you. I don’t really think we’ve caught a break in a year, right, honey?”

“Pretty much,” her husband agrees, bouncing the little girl. “She’s a handful.”

“Yup, have fun with her! Bye!” Gina hollers, plucking the kid from her husband’s arms and pushing her into Tessa’s. She then turns on her heels, dramatically mock-walking away and everyone laughs while Greg captures the moment for eternity, standing in front of them.

 

To Tessa’s great relief, they don’t actually leave right away but stay for another half hour with the cameras off, so that the kid can warm up to Scott and her and not get too fussy when her parents do leave. (And ‘leave’ is a strong word. They’re all basically just moving up the beach a little bit, their phones at the ready if anything should go awry. Tessa is glad for that, too.) It’s not like Tessa has never babysat before, because she has and God knows Scott has, but it’s still something entirely different to get filmed doing it, her under-developed parenting skills on display for the whole world to see and comment on.

 

Tessa watches the other couples get moved to different sets around the villa, splitting into groups by units. As per usual, they’re getting Greg, who collects them shortly after Scott finishes reading to Marnie from a picture book her parents left them with, and walks them to the beach in front of the villa. There's an umbrella set up for them and a ridiculous amount of beach toys for the kid scattered around beneath it. Scott is walking briskly ahead, the toddler snug on his hip, like he’s never done anything in his life other than carry babies around and Tessa falls behind a little bit, weakened to tardiness by the view. He looks so natural, so at ease. So damn, damn good with a child in his arms. Of course she’s seen him with his nieces and nephews, when they were just tiny little babies that fit on the length of forearm, and that had been nearly unbearable to watch, too. Suffice it to say, she could have done without the reminder. 

 

 _I wanna have your babies_ , her brain sing-songs and for someone who just last night said she was sure she didn’t want kids for a while, she suddenly feels like she could see herself with Scott’s by tomorrow at the latest. _Fuck_ , she’s so screwed. How will she ever get through this day?! And look, even if it was kind of comical seeing him mother a plastic baby all of yesterday, it was still cute. But this...sitting down with him in the sand overlooking the ocean, watching him tug the toddler’s little yellow shirt in so her pale, chubby belly isn’t exposed to the sun? _Cute_ is really not the word that applies here anymore. He grins at her, pointing out Marnie’s adorable little fingers as they grab for his arms and Tessa could climb him like a tree instantly. She thinks her uterus might be swelling to twice its size, ready to grow a hockey-team-worth of his babies. 

 

Tessa is practically leering at him as he starts playing peekaboo with the little girl, raising a beach towel to his face and tugging it down to pull faces at the kid. He chuckles along every time Marnie giggles in reply. It takes about seventy years (in which Tessa dies a slow, painful death of longing) until Marnie gets bored with the game and starts whimpering, saying “Momma” pitifully. And then Scott thinks on his feet. Better than Tessa ever could, because she can’t think of anything at all. Her whole focus is on Scott and the child, interacting like he was born to be a dad. She can see the baby fall in love with him, too, in real time, and the bright wonder on her little face is a look she knows by heart from what it feels like on her own features. 

 

“No more of that, yeah?” Scott asks and puts the towel aside, squinting into the sun as he scrambles for an alternative to entertain the child. There is a soft breeze carrying the salty smell of the sea over to them but pervasive through all of it is the scent of baby that makes her want to reach out and bury her nose in Marnie’s wispy hair. It’s all a little bit much. 

“Look, Marnie,” Scott coos, high-pitched and freaking adorable when his eyes have caught on something to present to the toddler. “How about we build a tower, huh?”

“Oh, yes!” Tessa agrees, following his gaze. “Look, we’ve got all those blocks here.”

“Tower!” Marnie repeats cheerily, her slight unhappiness forgotten in an instant. Tessa empties the big box full of building blocks into the sand between her and Marnie.

“Exactly,” Scott says excitedly. “Which one do you wanna start with?”

“Wed,” says Marnie, sounding like the cutest little chipmunk.

“The red one?” Scott asks her, beaming. “Okay, let’s go with the red one.”

He picks it up and hands it to the child, and then adds more, one by one as she points them out, helping her to stack them on top of each other. Tessa helps to raise it up, too. Until it’s so big Marnie has to stand up on her baby feet in order to build it even higher, until she can’t reach the top anymore.

 

And then she knocks it down with a shrill, gleeful shriek. And giggles. And starts to build another one. All this time Greg is nearby, filming, but Tessa barely notices him anymore, too enraptured by the game, by watching the little girl look all grown up in her concentration and determination to keep raising towers and then knocking them down, not getting bored of it for a long, long time.

 

The last time she completes one, she gets so into the subsequent knock-down, that she tumbles over her own feet, into the tower, and falls flat on her face. Tessa knows that moment before the wail comes from every time she has ever been around small children, so she reacts like a shot, proud of herself for the presence of mind to do so. She plucks the girl from the fine, white sand right as she starts to cry, startled to fear by the fall, and immediately rocks her, cooing soft reassurances and plucking a strand of hair out of her own messy top knot to dangle in front of the little girl’s face. Marnie, thankfully, takes the distraction and pulls at Tessa’s hair, the tears and the fussing stopping short, replaced by cheery little giggles.

“Oooh, she likes you,” Scott says, sitting cross-legged beside her and brings his hand up to run his index finger up and down the meaty toddler arm, soft and painfully sweet to witness.

“I think she’s getting a little tired,” she says to him and then turns her head to the baby again. “Do you wanna go look at the water a bit, Marnie?”

The child nods, bobbing her head up and down with vigour.

 

Springing into action before she can, Scott plops the sun hat that Marnie had taken off some time before the rise and fall of tower number four back on her head, and offers Tessa his hand to pull her and Marnie up a moment later. When she is standing, he doesn’t move for a second, just trails his hand from her elbow to her hand, squeezing it tightly while he adjusts the hat on Marnie’s head, keeping his eyes on Tessa.

 

“You look good,” he murmurs, his eyebrows arching up in the most incredible way, making his whole face light up into devotion. (And who is she even kidding anymore, she’s completely in love with him again... _shit_.) “We might need to keep her.”

 

Tessa can’t move, and thoughtlessly walks after Scott when he takes her by the hand. She’s trying to process the tightness in her chest at the creeping revelation that she is all the way back on her bullshit, despite her best efforts, and tries not to drop the child from her hips. She follows dumbly, a bit overwhelmed and not at all conscious of Greg, who trails behind them. Scott pulls them all the way to the shoreline, wading into the ocean until their feet get washed over by the soft waves. The view of the endless sea stretching as wide as the eye can see in front of her is just slightly less breathtaking and beautiful than Scott is right now.

 

“Look, there’s just water,” Tessa says, prying her eyes forcefully away from Scott’s just so she can speak again. “So much water until the end of the world.”

“Wha-daa,” parrots Marnie and then yelps: “Fish! Fish!”

“Exactly,” Tessa says. “There are so many little fishies in there. We swam with them the other day. And they are so colourful. They’re blue and yellow and purple…”

“Wed!” Marnie gurgles happily.

“Ooh, I don’t know,” Tessa replies. “Did we see red fishies, Scott?”

“Tod,” Marnie repeats before Scott can answer the question and wiggles around in Tessa’s arm so she can look at him and touch her tiny hand to his sharply angled jaw.

 

“That’s right, that’s Scott,” Tessa chuckles and then Marnie turns her head and brings her free hand up to touch Tessa’s chin.

“I’m Tessa,” she answers the unspoken question. Then Marnie retracts her hand to touch her own cheek.

“Manie,” The little girl says. Tarzan-and-Jane-ing the whole thing to full-circle.

“Yes, you’re Marnie,” Tessa coos while the baby touches her face again and she says: “Tessa” to enforce the impromptu vocabulary lesson. 

“Tessa,” Marnie says.

“Yes! Good job!” Scott and Tessa say at the same time.

 

“Tod,” Marnie repeats, once more turning to him.

“Right, I’m Scott,” he bops her tiny button nose. “Marnie.” She giggles and Scott gets an idea. “Ooh, see I got your nose now!” He ‘plucks’ it off of her, smushung his thumb between his index and middle finger and Marnie makes a face of shock, her lips puckering into a surprised little ‘o’. “I got your nose now, where is it? Hmm, I’m so hungry, maybe I’ll eat it.” He shoves his fingers into his mouth dramatically and makes some munching sounds. “Oh, ate your nose! Mmmh, yummy.”

Marnie fusses because she doesn’t like that _at all._

“Okay, okay, here, you get it back,” Scott hurries and puts her nose back quickly. “There you go.”

But Marnie is still wiggling, straining for the ground and Tessa follows the request, drops down to kneel and puts Marnie down to hold her between her knees in the shallow water. The baby grabs hold of her tank-top’s collar, just beside Tessa’s mic. Scott drops down beside her, getting his khaki shorts completely wet and not caring by the looks of it.

 

“You’re great at this,” he says after a moment and she turns to look at him, keeping her hand around Marnie’s arm as the child bends down to splash around in the water. “I mean it.” Tessa feels the water cool her skin in the best way but she sees _nothing_  but Scott leaning in, slow and deliberate, and puts the most chaste, precious kiss on her lips. “You’ll make a great mom one day,” he says when he leans out again, opening his eyes to lock them on hers.

“Just don’t leave me alone with them,” she mutters, more than a little lost in him.

He grins, so brightly it makes the sun seem dull.

“Never,” he promises, just before he kisses her again. 

 

It lasts longer this time and she knows he’s well on his way to deepening it when five pudgy fingers land on the spot where they’re connected and Marnie demands their attention again. They both laugh and when Greg lets them know that their babysitting time is over a few moments later, Tessa is so loath to let the moment go, she veritably stalls at the shoreline, taking way too long to collect their things and only finding solace in watching Scott carry the little girl back on his shoulders the entire way to the villa.

 

The rest of the day passes by in a soft haze, punctuated only by short flares of panic when Tessa periodically reminds herself that it’s all fake and that Scott doesn’t really love her or want to have children with her, even if he looks at her like he does. But she doesn’t care today, she decides over dinner, barely listening as the others recount their babysitting stories. (Shana stepped on a lego and said “Fuck” in front of their baby and still feels bad, Bonnie and Kitty sadly have had even less luck with the real deal than with the fake one...but then, that’s life. You can't win every time.)

 

By the time Tessa and Scott retreat to bed, she works herself into a state of superficial calm while executing her nightly routine. She pretends that she's just fine, stripping out of her top and shorts, and devoting her nightly shower to calm the nerves that keep flashing up stubbornly every other minute. _It’s all good_ , she tells herself, drying off. _It was a good day. You’ll be alright._ Yes, it gets a little weird with him here and there and yeah, now that she is admittedly in love with him again (as if she hadn’t been since this whole thing started…) she’ll be on the lookout for signs, whether she likes it or not, but _nothing has changed._ (The old mantra resurfaces, triumphant.) 

 

He’s still Scott. They’re still pretending. And if stuff happens that makes her go _hmmmm_ , like that time she’s pretty sure he came as she sat on him in the hot tub in front of their room, he never acknowledges it later. It’s all just part of the act for him. Just his way of making it look real. If there was more to it, if it all meant more than that, he would surely say something, right? But he doesn’t. He never does. So she just has to keep going. Relax, mind her head, and _keep going._

 

“I think we did well today,” she says evenly, nerves forcefully in check, when she is done getting ready for bed and has climbed onto the mattress to lie next to Scott. He’s immediately put his latest sports biography on his bedside table to turn to his side and watched her settle in like it was the most captivating entertainment.

“Me too,” he smiles and looks content.

“You’re _so_ good with kids,” she praises, her ribcage tight around her heart. ( _It’s okay_ , she tells her fluttering pulse. _It’s okay, you can handle it.)_

“If I wasn’t after nearly ten years of coaching, I’d have done something wrong, eh?” Scott half-laughs at her compliment.

“Do you want a lot of them?” Tessa asks curiously, and watches him consider her question, his tanned face moving in thought, looking golden in the faint light of the bedside lamp.

“I don’t know,” he says. “Two or three, maybe? You?” 

“Two probably,” she muses. “If there’s three there’s always one parent too little.”

“We have our parents to help,” he shrugs easily.

 

And freezes when he hears himself. Tessa is pretty sure her entire nervous system stops circulating until he speaks again.

 

“I mean, you know...separately,” he mutters. 

“Of course,” she whispers. _Of course._

“Though if you ever need help, I’m sure my Mom will take your kids off your hands whenever no questions asked,” Scott tells her, punching his pillow under his arm while he speaks. "Or... _I_ will, you know."

“I know,” she says, the thought of him babysitting some faceless baby that isn't his, is weird, uncomfortable and shapeless. She can't even imagine it.

“You’re part of the family,” Scott continues.

“I know,” she repeats.

“I want you to stay part of it, too,” he says and it takes a moment to realise that he’s labouring with something, long enough for the air to change between them, long enough to turn her head to him and watch as his expression changes into something she can’t quite read. 

 

“You know, I don’t want anything...messing that up,” he finally grits out and Tessa is mildly shocked that it feels like he’s edging in on _talking about it_. “So if I...if stuff gets weird out there and I, um, you know, when I get in a bit over my head and you’re not comfortable, just pinch me or something. I...sometimes I get a little, like, caught up in it.” 

He’s talking about the hot tub thing. That is a thing that is happening right now. _Okay._

 

“Hm,” she hums, non-committedly, because her brain is suddenly blank like a white canvas, mocking her.

“I don’t want it to be weird for you,” he reiterates. 

“It’s not weird. It’s okay. Part of the game,” she reassures him, because that’s what he wants, isn’t it? He wants to put her at ease about the sexual stuff that she might misunderstand, mistake for deeper feelings that he doesn’t have, or at the very least very clearly doesn’t _want_ to have, which is basically the same thing anyway. “I haven’t been uncomfortable so far,” she continues, doing her best, like she always has, to level his rumbling emotions. 

 

“Actually, sometimes I was more than comfortable,” she adds just so he knows. Just so he knows that it’s not just _his_ body reacting. That there’s no need for him to be ashamed because it’s happened to her, too. Maybe not to completion...but she liked what they did in the hot tub...and he can deal with knowing that.

“Me too,” he says. She knows.

“I know,” she says, looks squarely at him and then Scott —cocky, confident, smug-ass Scott Moir— blushes like a schoolgirl and looks away, flushed with embarrassment.

 

“I’m gonna get the lights,” he mumbles and it sounds like ‘I can't believe I came into my pants under you.’ 

 

“I’m sorry about that, you know,” is the next thing he says and it takes him a while. A good minute of him draping himself in the shelter of the darkness, where she can’t see, where he won't let her observe how ashamed he really is. “I don’t know how that happened.”

 

She _does._

 

 _She_ did that...she dry-humped him. She wanted him to feel something. None of that should be a surprise. He came because she _fucking_ wanted him too. Silly boy. Just to show him that she can make his body react. That she’s not his damned little sister. That she’s not the little Tutu Virtch anymore that wrote him a stupid love letter at ten years old that he never replied to. He doesn’t want her, she gets it, thank you very much. But he _could._ It’s not impossible. His body reacts to her, it _does._ That’s all.

 

“It’s okay,” she shrugs, letting him off the hook nonetheless. “It’s a boy thing. Happens.” But then, because a little pettiness must be allowed, if only just for revenge that he’s made her fall in love with him again with no intention of catching her, she quips: “Why not get something out of it? All that effort must be good for something. A little orgasm can’t hurt…”

 

“I...that’s not...I don’t,” he sputters out and she’s glad that the dark hides the wicked, little smirk she can’t keep off her face. He blathers on stupidly: “Do you mean...I mean…”

 

“You okay, there?” she cackles, and maybe that’s a little bit too self-indulgent. But still.

 

“No,” he says, sounding raw, that cadence he gets when his temper is just about to flare. He clears his throat. “I think I’m gonna go for a walk.”

“Everything good?” she hurries, suddenly red-hot-scared that she overstepped. “It was just a joke, I didn’t mean to—”

Instead of blowing up at her like he could (like he has before, sometimes, when his mood shifted to peevedness), suddenly Scott pulls her in hard, almost roughly against his side. He snags her up like she’s weightless, a leaf in the wind, lost to his strength, and moves her like a storm.

 

Too quick to fully appreciate, but sharp enough to make her whole body burst into white light, he’s pressed himself flush against her, his front aligned with the right side of her body, his left hand a claw wrapped tight around her shoulder and his right cupping her head, smushing her temple against his lips harshly. He kisses her there, long and forceful, as he scratches down her scalp. When it’s over, he shoves his forehead into the place his lips had occupied before and holds her there. She’s stopped breathing entirely, which makes _his_ staggered panting sound like a thunder in the utter silence of the room.

He's shaking with effort, like he's holding back. Is he holding back? Can't he let go? No matter if it's just a whim...just his body reacting. Jesus, his breaths come out so laboured, it's making _her_  lungs feel tight, running feverishly hot even though the AC is on full blast. And then he does two things at the same time that blow out her brain. Because he thrusts, ever so slightly, into her thigh, unmistakably hard for her, and upon finding that friction, growls into her ear, just so. Low, raspy and violent. None of it is for the cameras, all of it is Scott, just _her_ Scott. 

 

And this might be the quickest Tessa ever got her panties well and fucking _drenched_. And, damn him. She’s got _nothing_ on him, he doesn’t even need to grind on her to turn her to putty. _Fuck._

 

“I know, Tess,” he exhales, his body beating like a drum, breath so hot on her skin, it feels as if it's burning her flesh away like acid and she fucking _loves_ it. The way her name sounds like a moan tumbling from his lips. “I’ll be back in a bit. Don’t wait up, okay?”

A second later, he moves away from her. So rapidly that the loss of his flashing hot body leaves her shivering, cold and bereft. He doesn’t say another thing, just charges up ahead to the glass doors that face into the yard and pushes one open, disappearing into the night and not coming back for hours.

 

It’s fine with her. The second his footsteps outside disappear, Tessa releases her breath and tries to chase it back into her system. She doesn’t hesitate for a second before shoving her hands roughly down her jersey shorts and into her panties. She doesn’t even bother with circles and teasing, she’s way past that. She pushes two fingers inside herself and comes after just a couple pointed thrusts against her palm, wincing. And then she does it again, taking her time. And again. After, she scrubs her scent off her fingers, but not before wiping her hand on the underside of his pillow. 

 

She’ll be fine in the morning.

 

She’ll never speak of this to him again, will not demand answers in the harsh light of the coming dawn. But it happened, and she knows it. And yeah, if she hopes again, just a little, that’s her own risk to take. She falls asleep thinking this, offering herself up to fatalism. He’ll be her downfall. She’ll try to put up a fight, true to her principles, stubborn in nature as she’s ever been. But whatever happens, will happen. And he wanted her, even if it was just for a second, not for any camera and not for any money. He touched her and she'll let him touch her if he wants to again. So let _that_ be her story, she's okay with that. It’s the first time on this island that she goes to sleep with some semblance of peace in her heart.

 

The next day, the Elimination shoot starts late again (after a whole seven hours of Tessa and Scott steadfastly acting like whatever it was that had unfolded between them the night before had never happened). A little before sundown, they all gather around the gazebo, reuniting with the parents and their babies, and get to watch the rough cuts of the highlight reels of their babysitting back with their charges on their laps. Tessa is holding Marnie’s little hand tightly when Jeffrey and Justin are declared the winner of the challenge. But she isn’t sad, the hours she got to spent watching the baby that is sitting on her lap now were enough of a win in her book.

 

Gina and Dale’s verdict about their own babysitting skills is also very good, so there’s even less reason to be sad. “While I agree that it looked like Bonnie and Kitty kind of fell apart watching Felix,” Gina says, repeating the talking points of the parents that made their statements before, “I was really super impressed with Tessa and Scott. It looked like they really understood each other without having to speak, like a well-oiled machine. They were so in tune with each other that they could be super attentive to Marnie and she’s in a bit of a shy phase right now with strangers but she took to them immediately. We would let Tessa and Scott watch her again in a heartbeat!”

 

“Just give us a call,” Scott jokes, turning on his bar stool to grin at them (Tessa truly hopes they do, nuzzling Marnie goodbye before finally handing her back, giggly and happy, to her parents). It’s the last moment of levity before Shana and Deric, as well as Bonnie and Kitty, are asked to give their bottom two statements. 

By the end of it, Bonnie and Kitty do not make the cut and this time, different from last week, Tessa is sincerely sad to see the couple go. 

 

And yet...Scott and her are still very much in the game, living to fight another day on this beautiful island to play out their romance. And she’s so buzzingly happy about it, her skin prickles and tingles all over. And that has shit-all to do with the one million dollars.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, internet points go out to Easter Egg hunters and Scott POV questions are answered as far as I can below.
> 
> Yell about it on twitter if you like at #whatslovefic  
> Here is a tumblr-post moodpboard for this chapter if you want to reblog anything or just look at cute babies on the beach: https://thevirtue-moirs.tumblr.com/post/177182719070/wlgtdwichapter-fiveread-on-ao3-here
> 
> AND BLESS ALL YOUR HEARTS FOR YOUR COMMENTS, THEY ARE LIFE!


	6. It's Physical

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eternal thanks to KIM, KEL and FAIRWINDS09, as always, for tripple-teaming these monsters on such a regular basis and making me look a lot better than I am.
> 
> The wonderful skatetogether13 came to me with this sparkling amazing edit she made which inspired me so much I put it into the chapter. Please see the music video mentioned this chapter here: [T&S - Skin by Rihanna](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OMvBYnFT-To)  
> ....and give big props to her over at her twitter: @taliavirtuemoir
> 
> One last note before we go: I will be busy until the end of the week and I'm going on vacation on Saturday (but this one will be like a real tourist vacation with doing stuff and being active, not the writer's retreat that I wrote BEHAVE! on)...so you will have to wait a bit for chapter seven...I hope you forgive me <3

****Breakfast without Bonnie and Kitty is supremely weird. The places where they’ve sat are now empty and their whole easy, relaxed way of recapping whatever has been going on behind the scenes of the show (may that be rotten cheese in the fridge or Erica’s latest pair of outrageous designer shoes, they always made it interesting), is missing from the table conversation and that upsets the entire dynamic they had cultivated over the past week.

 

“It’s so weird that Bonnie and Kitty are gone, right?” Jeffrey finally says and there is a round of affirmative mumbles coming from his fellow contenders.

“Yeah,” Kaitlyn agrees, otherwise happily munching on the poached egg Tessa had made her. “I know it’s only been a week and a bit but I liked our group. It’ll be so sad to see more people go.”

“Oh, ‘cause you’re not going, huh?” Shana quips good-naturedly. But Kaitlyn apparently has had her claws sharpened overnight.

“I don’t think so, no,” the blonde smirks. “I mean, we’re not fighting every night like some other people do…”

Shana, who goes from surprised to ‘oh no she didn’t’ to ‘how dare she?’, shoots her a death glare while the table falls silent.

“Well, I think if you can’t fight in a relationship,” Scott offers, trying to smooth over the situation like he was bound to, “then it’s not a totally great relationship in the first place.”

“Oh, says Mister ‘We never fight’,” Justin laughs.

“Maybe not fight but discuss,” Scott amends sheepishly.

“Yeah, he loves his discussions,” Tessa smiles at him sweetly, taking his hand next to her orange juice. “ _Always_ speaks his mind, that one.” The way he squeezes her hand back tells him he understood the dig just fine.

 

Their off-day comes and goes, much like the following couple of days, without Tessa and Scott gaining any clarity on the _Tessa and Scott_ of it at all. After the night of the Baby Challenge Elimination, Tessa had started to let herself hope again, but two days later, she’s barely even sure that it happened at all in the first place. Whenever they’re alone, Scott is pleasant but aloof. There’s no other way to say it. 

 

He doesn’t broach the subject of sex anymore, doesn’t really broach any topic other than superficial goofing around. He campaigns hard for bingeing a new show  on Netflix and then they watch some sitcom every night until he conveniently falls asleep during it. Outside of their room when there are cameras and people around, though, he’s tactile as ever. He massages her neck and shoulders whenever they’re in reach and his hands aren’t otherwise occupied. The night before they’re meant to get started on shooting the challenge for episode three, while watching a movie with Jeffrey and Justin, he actually pulls her half on his chest and starts rubbing her back. There are no cameras. This is entirely for their competitors’ benefit but Scott goes for it with a vengeance anyway.

 

Ten minutes into the movie, she wonders if he plans on ever stopping. Twenty minutes in, he is still doing it and it’s making her drowsy. She can’t help it and she wants to be a little frustrated with him because of reasons but she can’t. She’s just so comfortable. Eventually, during some car chase happening on screen, his fingers dip under the hem of her shirt where it rides up at the back (because she’s lying curled up, her arms folded on his thigh). He stops in his tracks and pulls back his fingers, but Tessa isn’t having it. 

 

“Please,” she whispers (which should do the trick) and cranes her neck up to look at him. He stares at her for a second, like she’s just brought on some existential crisis with her request, but then he works his hand back to where it had slipped before as Tessa puts her head back down on his leg. Next thing she knows, Tessa has lost all interest in the movie, all of her focus devoted to the way Scott’s fingertips run up and down in circles on the skin of her lower back. She tries really hard not to sigh and moan by accident, but it’s a task and a half. He adjusts her a couple times, probably because her weight is unevenly balanced on him, her sharp cheekbones cutting into his flesh where she lies. The last time he does it, towards the end of the flick, he half-pulls her hair to move her head a little to the side, and that’s the one time she can’t hold back the moan. He tenses under her and she feels embarrassed. He isn’t really supposed to know how much she liked that just now, how much she would really like to ask him to do it again. Only harder, maybe. Of course she doesn’t. She just stays where she is as the movie ends.

 

Stubbornly, she doesn’t move for the entire time the credits roll either, putting her weight harder on Scott’s body, just to keep him there. But actually, he doesn’t seem antsy to pull away, either. In fact, his hand is still underneath her shirt when the credits are all the way over and the DVD menu is back flashing on the screen. It’s still there when Jeffrey and Justin say goodnight. And she counts 23 long seconds after they have rounded the corner into the living room and out of sight until Scott finally stops touching her. He retracts his hand from her back and gives it one last pat above the reinstated platonic boundary of her shirt. “We’re done,” is what that pat says and she takes it, because what else is she going to do? Throw a fit because he won’t keep touching her when the show is over? 

 

That was never what they agreed on and one forehead kiss isn’t going to change that, even if it had been the hottest forehead kiss in the history of mankind, potentially. It had been like all the other impulsive things Scott has ever done...probably felt good to him in the moment and then lost its appeal once he’d tried it. Like getting a platinum blonde Eminem buzz-cut in middle school or buying a house to renovate with his brothers that he doesn’t have the money to fix. It’s all very par for the course, she doesn’t know why she’s even surprised. 

 

She pushes herself up from his knee and then sits, watching him stretch beside her. And of course his damn shirt hikes up, revealing his abs (which she has seen a lot, it’s not a new sight, okay, but it’s still unnecessary). 

“Thank you,” she tells him when he’s done. 

“For what?” He asks her and yawns heartily.

“The hands, you know,” she glances over her shoulder to indicate her back so he gets it faster. “It was…comfortable.”

“Yeah, no problem,” he says, voice almost comically shaky and looks at his feet. 

 

_What the fuck is up with him, anyway?_

 

“So, I’m gonna head to bed,” she tells him, rises from the couch and fully doesn’t expect him to enlighten her, simply going off of those past few days. When he doesn’t follow, she looks down at him quizzically. “Wanna watch another episode?”

“Yeah,” he nods but doesn’t move. “I’ll just...I’ll just hang out for a sec and then I’ll be there.”

“Scott?” She raises her eyebrows. Does he have another _situation_? Is he fucking kidding?!

 

“Please, don’t say anything,” he says, not meeting her eye, not even lifting his head. “I’m working on it.”

“We could also just talk about it, you know?” Tessa says, starting out at full volume and then dropping to a whisper when she hears Kaitlyn and Andrew come back from a late night swim, wet feet slapping down the marble tiles in the living room.

“What’s the point?” He says and then his jaw clenches so hard, she fully expects it to snap at any moment. “It’s just a boy thing.” 

 

(Is it just her or does it sound like he’s frustrated with her? Why is he pissed off at her?! She didn’t do anything to his dick tonight, she kept her very respectful distance, alright? It’s not her fault that he apparently flip flops from embracing getting horny from the fake-making out to feeling grossed out by it. She can’t control his responses, so what is he mad at her for?)

 

If possible, her eyebrows climb even further towards her hairline, but she can tell by the way he holds his body that he’s done talking now. He looks exactly like he had at ten and eleven, when he got out of one of his temper tantrums and afterwards punished the whole world for existing by shutting it out. And fine, if he wants to act like a child instead of a mature adult who could, like, actually confront awkward situations to make them less awkward, she doesn’t have to sit around and watch him do it. She’s watched half of the episode by the time he gets in bed and she wordlessly starts it over from the top. She knows that if she didn’t,  he’d ask her every two minutes what happened before and since he doesn’t want to talk, they’re simply not gonna be talking. See how he likes _that._

 

For all intents and purposes, Scott does not seem to care that they’re not talking. Not when they go to sleep after a second episode and not in the morning. At noon, just before the production team gets in to set up for the taping of the new challenge announcement and then getting started on whatever new task they have come up with for them, he finally breaks, though. He’s standing in the kitchen, getting a refill of Kaitlyn’s homemade lemonade when he decides to play unfairly in order to get her to acknowledge him again. Which is by telling on her. (So maybe he cares a little bit after all.)

 

“The only thing that’s freezing me out today, is my girlfriend,” he says, a lame pun on something about the freezer and the ice cubes for the lemonade and Kaitlyn and Andrew chuckle, sitting at their spot at the kitchen island. (Always the same spot, with Kaitlyn standing beside Andrew, sitting on a bar stool, with her arm draped leisurely around his shoulder so they look like they are constantly photo-ready.) Andrew laughs at Scott’s joke and Kaitlyn makes a face.

“Aw, trouble in paradise?” the blonde coos but there’s an edge to it, somewhere at the base note of her tone. It makes Tessa remember instantly that this is still a competition.

“She’s mad at me because I spoiled a movie ending for her,” Scott sighs pitifully, lying shamelessly through his teeth. “And I apologised a million times, but she still won’t forgive me.”

 

And see, this is just vile. Because now she has no choice. Now she has to be all adoring and funny and tell him that it’s okay and walk over to him to let him pull her against his frame and tuck her hair back between her ears and purr a “Thank you, babe,” when he compliments the tight white summer dress she has picked for the challenge announcement. She has to pretend she isn’t freezing him out all the way to them sitting down under the gazebo, eyes trained on Hunter who is poised to begin. 

“You’re not off the hook,” she whispers to him, just before they start rolling. “We’re going to have to talk about this stuff eventually.” 

 

It’s remarkable how fast his face switches from obvious unease at her words to well-spirited adoration, the moment they yell _Rolling!_ on the first take of the day and the cameras start recording their every move. She is not angry at him for it, not per se, but she also isn’t particularly happy with him either. Plastering a grin onto her face, she turns around to watch Hunter get powdered down one last time before everything is set up and he talks freely, like he always does. (He might not be the most talkative or even approachable fellow when the lights go down but he’s definitely a pro, always well prepared and hitting all his marks on camera. Tessa has to respect that.)

 

“Couples, for this week’s challenge our motto is ‘Take Me Dancing’ and it’s, you guessed it, all about movement,” he announces and Tessa perks up where she stands in between Scott and Jeffrey. Dancing! That’s _perfect._  

 

“In your two-part challenge you will plan, shoot and edit your own music video to a random song drawn from this cute jukebox that I have right here,” Hunter continues. “And for the second part, prepare a three minute choreography to a song of your choice to put on a show complete with costumes and makeup sizzling enough to convince your fellow contestants that your chemistry with your partner is _also_ in the dance _._ ”

Tessa and Scott turn around to grin at each other at the exact same time. And yeah, he’s annoyingly unclear about his intentions and frustratingly evasive with any tangible communication, but as her partner in this competition, he’s right there on the same page with her. If the challenge is dancing, they have already won and it’s the fierce competitors in both of them (those who like to _win_ stuff), that smirk at each other already triumphant. The others have seen nothing yet...Tessa and Scott are gonna crush this. He winks at her, confident and a little smug. She loves it.

 

“Now, obviously not all of you are born dancers, so we have a special surprise for you,” Hunter goes on and Tessa resists the urge to turn her head towards the commotion left of them from behind the bushes. “Two people who live, eat and breathe dance, namely ice dance.” 

Next to her, Scott gets antsy with heightened curiosity, this is getting more and more up their alley by the second. To the left of the gazebo, a man and a woman appear with Erica as she points out the spot where they’re gonna walk into the frame of Hank’s camera. Scott grabs Tessa’s hand and holds it tightly just as  she recognises who they are.

“Please give a very warm welcome to your dance coaches and guest-judging couple of the week,” Hunter hollers. “Marie-France Dubreuil and Patrice Lauzon!” 

 

Everybody claps. Everybody but Tessa and Scott, because he won’t let go of her hand in his clasp. “Tessa!” he hisses, voice buzzing like a live wire.

“I know,” she whispers back. Those are his favourite Canadian ice dancers of all time.

“Holy shit,” he mutters, breathless. He’s so boyishly flustered and excited that, try as she might, Tessa can’t keep being grumpy with him. His eyes are lit up like Times Square and he’s still clutching her hand, like she’s the only thing keeping him from bursting. 

 

It’s not every day that a small town’s resident skating coach gets to meet figure skating royalty like them. Tessa honestly can’t count the hours Scott has made her sit through watching their programs, picking them apart and asking her to help him stage an approximate of this or that lift into his body so he can then teach it to his skaters. She knows he met them in passing once at a competition he had a junior team compete in, but he’d been too chicken to say anything. Which was saying a lot. Considering the type of person Scott is, how outgoing, unafraid and confident, the fact that he was too nervous to approach Marie-France and Patrice when he had the chance to, leaves no doubt in her mind that this is a humongous deal for him. 

 

“Marie-France and Patrice, five-time Canadian champions in ice dance,” Hunter says, introducing them once they have joined him under the far end of the gazebo, almost close enough to touch. “What dance secrets are you prepared to pass down onto our contenders?”

“Well, we are going to be working with each and every couple,” Marie-France starts, a heavy and charming Quebecois accent colouring her speech, “to create a vision for their music video as well as a nice ballroom or latin routine that plays to their strengths and illustrates the dynamic of their relationship.”

“Yes, our goal will be to bring the couple’s love out in their dancing,” Patrice agrees, his accent a little less pronounced but still there. “To make it visible in the movement.”

“You do have experience with that, since you are also husband and wife in real life, aren’t you?” Hunter asks.

“Yes, we are married, so we will of course also be having an eye on the chemistry and individual partnerships here,” Marie-France replies with a sly grin.

“We’ll be very observant, so maybe at the final vote, we will be able to spot the fake couple ourselves,” Patrice agrees.

“This will be fun!” His wife chirps.

 

“We’re counting on it!” Hunter enthuses with his bright, TV-ready smile. “Now, before you have a chance to get to know our couples, I would be remiss not to tell you that you have a giant fan in our midst.” (In a flash, Scott crushes Tessa’s hand enough for her to wince, but he doesn’t let go.) “He has been coaching since his teens and ice danced himself as a kid. When we asked him who his favourite skaters were he said your names so fast!”

“We’ve already heard,” Patrice smiles kindly and looks at the four couples in front of him, eyes eventually landing on them, likely because Scott has gone rigid and short of breath beside Tessa.

“Marie-France and Patrice, meet Scott,” Hunter says, confirming Patrice’s suspicion, and starts walking the ice dancers towards Tess and her fake boyfriend who is having a very _real_ freak out.

 

Tessa’s eyes flit from the skaters to Scott, to the skaters and back to Scott as they shake hands. Scott barely manages a “Hi,” and he’s blushing fiercely and sounds thirteen and adorably shy.

“So nice to meet you,” Marie-France says and follows her handshake with a hug in face of Scott’s adorable fluster.

“Wow, okay, this is so cool,” he mutters, like he can’t believe this is really happening and then clears his throat, visibly fighting for composure, for some semblance of coolness, and puts his arm around Tessa. “Um, this is my girlfriend, T. I mean, Tess.” He shakes his head sheepishly, as if to get it to function properly again. “I mean, Tessa.”

 

Tessa chuckles and gets a hug from Marie-France and Patrice, too. It’s not that she isn’t excited to meet them as well, but she keeps it together so that Scott can freak out in peace. Which is why she refrains from squealing when a few hours later the four of them —Tessa, Scott, Marie-France and Patrice— are standing in the nearby tennis club’s gym turned impromptu dance studio, starting to work on the concept for their music video. 

 

For full disclosure before they start shooting, Tessa tells their coaches about her legs and about how sometimes she has to take a break and walk a bit of the tension off but that she is okay to dance most styles for a couple of hours at a time. Marie-France runs her palm soothingly down Tessa’s back as she recounts the story of quitting ballet and tells her she understands, having an injury spoil a huge opportunity is something she knows from her life as an amateur skater...from the biggest possible stage. 

 

“But so what?” Marie-France says and shrugs, “So, we withdrew from the Olympics. Shit happens. It was terrible at the time, but it didn’t ruin my life. Now, I have a wonderful family and a great marriage; I don’t need a gold medal to make me happy. Every setback is good for something, I believe that. Without your injury, maybe you and Scott would never have ended up here. And that would be sad because then we could not work together.”

 

The theme of “what if’s” winds itself through the whole training session. Resurfacing time and time again. At first though, as Tessa and Scott warm up in a corner while Luke and Greg go through some production-related stuff with Marie-France and Patrice, the only ‘what if’ that’s on the front of Scott’s mind is ‘What if I make an ass of myself in front of my skating heroes?’

“I’m freaking out,” he whispers to her, stretching into almost a split on the floor.

“I can see that,” she says.

“I can’t dance, T. I’m not a dancer like you,” he whines. “They’re gonna laugh me out of the room.”

“Shh, you’re fine,” she reassures him. Okay, he might not have the most refined moves but he has a great innate ability to _feel_ music and that surely constitutes as a strength. “You just gotta...you know, let go a bit. Don’t be afraid to get big.”

Scott pauses and tilts his head at her, frowning at the innuendo she only realises she made in that second. “Get big, really?”

“Oh, you know what I mean,” she huffs.

 

From the other side of the room, Marie-France claps her hands and when Tessa looks up, she sees that Greg’s already filming. (Which is also why Marie recaps their task description once again, even if they just went through the challenge in detail on the way over. Now it’s exposition for the viewers.) “As you know, for your music video challenge, you are supposed to build a story around the song you have drawn from the jukebox.” ( Theirs is ‘ _Skin_ ’ by Rihanna.) “But because it’s very hard to plan and choreograph a full-length song, you’re supposed to build your project around the unused footage from your home story. So for the two of you, we actually have footage of you ice dancing together, which is obviously a special treat for me and Patrice.”

 

Marie-France picks up a tablet from a nearby chair that Luke undoubtedly put there before they started rolling and meets Tessa and Scott in the middle of the room.

“Let’s see what we’re working with, huh?” Patrice says, trailing after his wife. “Oh God,” Scott groans at the prospect of the two of them seeing him and Tessa skate.

“He’s shy now,” she tells the skaters, watching Scott fidget so badly, it looks like he’s trying to pry the skin off his one hand with the other. “Come on, it’s not bad.”

 

Together they watch the three minutes of ice dancing footage they managed to get from the three hours on the Moir’s rink. Scott cringes beside her the entire time, even if what they did is honestly pretty decent.

“That wasn’t bad at all!” Patrice says at the end of it, giving Scott’s back a few encouraging pats. “You just skate together for fun?

“Yeah, like an hour or two every other week,” Tessa replies. “We choreograph a bit for his couples.”

“That lift you’re doing is very impressive,” Marie-France says and sounds genuinely impressed. “Very advanced.”

“It’s our one big trick,” Scott mutters shyly, his neck flushed red and still not looking at either of them. 

“Either way, it is beautiful,” Patrice reiterates. “Why did you never make this a skating partnership?”

“Scott already had a partner and I was accepted into ballet school,” Tessa shrugs, “and when he and his partner split, I was in training full-time. So it was never really a possibility.”

“Your connection is really good, very natural and powerful. We can work with that, definitely,” Marie-France praises and then adds, after considering for a moment: “You know you would have had spectacular potential together.”

 

And there it is again. The ‘what if.’ Tessa thinks about it a lot as they set out to build an off-ice choreography to go with the skating footage they already have. During the process, choreographing with Scott, collaborating with Marie-France and Patrice to find ways to work around and into the music, she ponders what a life she might have lived if things had been different. Because the truth is, this whole effort is fun. For the first time in forever she feels like she is doing something with purpose, with a fire in her heart. School and waitressing and all the stuff she fills her time with fails in comparison to working with Scott and what the most incredible thing is: choreographing doesn’t hurt. Yeah, after the allotted three hours her shins are burning but her body feels light nonetheless. She isn’t sad, she’s quite the opposite.

 

In bed that night, they are too busy recapping the day to be weird with each other, they talk through everything like overly-excited teenagers who have just met their favourite pop star until they remind themselves that they need their rest if they want to perform well in the morning.

“Do you think it’s true what Marie said?” Scott asks her in the dark after they technically already said goodnight, because apparently that is one of those ‘what if’s that won’t quite let him rest. “About us skating together?”

“Maybe,” Tessa muses. “In another life.”

“Olympic Champions in Ice Dance: Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir. Ha,” Scott says, as if he was a sports announcer. And then stays silent for a while, apparently having turned what he says next over in his head a couple of times. “I think I would have kept going with you. I wouldn’t have quit.”

 

“Oh, you would’ve gotten sick of me so fast,” she says, even if his confidence in making that statement tugs at her heart more than a little. “Training day in and day out, grumpy in the morning. The hours we’d have spent together,” she huffs. They’d have had to spend nearly every waking hour together to accomplish something like winning the Olympics. “Plus you _hate_ my cold hands.”

“I wouldn’t have,” Scott insists. “And I’d have bought you gloves. If anything, you’d have gotten sick of me.”

“Sad thing is, I really don’t think so,” she mutters, quiet and honest.

“Yeah, right,” he chuckles. “So we’d have just been skating together forever?”

“Who knows?” Tessa asks and rolls to her side to look at him. “Why not?”

 

And maybe there is still a _little_ room for weirdness, because for a moment he looks at her like the thought of having spent seventeen years skating with her day in and day out is some really magical, wonderful thought.

“I’m sorry I was an idiot all day,” he mutters, at long last. “After this is all over, we’ll talk about...everything. I promise. But let’s just try and get through this thing first, okay?”

“I just wish you would trust me a little bit more,” she whispers and wonders if the big conversation he’s just teased for some time down the line is as big a thing as her thundering heart seems to think it is.

 

“I trust you with my life, T,” he tells her, sounding tired. “I don’t trust myself, that’s the problem. But let’s not get into this. We have a music video to come up with. And I’m sure you’ve got a million ideas so let’s hear ‘em.”

She humours him, lets his cryptic bullshit go because she doesn’t want to pick a fight and tells him what she has envisioned for their video. He’s right, she’s already come up with a lot of ideas.  She’s pretty much planned the whole thing.

 

Of course nothing ever works out the way you plan it, least of all in TV production, so what Tessa had pitched as a stylish Bauhaus kind of location turns into a parking garage above a gym. And the choreography they have worked out with Marie and Patch (they get to call them by their shortened names now, ‘cause they’re _friends_!), is too intricate to do in front of a single handheld camera, so they have to reduce it to lots of holding each other (but then again, Scott has forgotten half of it overnight so it’s probably a good thing in the end).

 

Another thing Tessa hadn’t planned for was what the dancing with him would do to her. She should’ve known. Silly woman. They’re not really doing much, a lift here and there but mostly it’s just Scott pulling her close, again and again and again until they get the take just right. But every time he does, he holds her a little bit tighter and looks a little bit deeper into her eyes. By the end of the day, Greg shows them a small segment that he’s plucked from the footage of the day that has Scott running his hand up her bare skin softly, where her leotard has a cut out at her back, and she feels the goosebumps he’d put there reappear just by seeing it. It’s taking her breath away a little bit, how they move together. 

 

When there’s just one more segment to shoot, Marie and Patch drop by with Hank who is following them around as they slip into the shots of every couple, commenting on their progress. 

“Aw, now you came for the most boring part,” Scott drawls when they say hi between two takes. “This last one is just Tess and me standing there.”

It’s true, they are just standing around, forehead to forehead looking at each other, it’s so not spectacular, and Tessa feels Scott’s slight disappointment, that they haven’t come over for something cooler, like the lift. Beside her, he looks a bit like a slightly miffed school kid whose parents arrived too late to the school play.

“But that is the most challenging thing,” Patch says, fatherly. “Just standing there and creating something from it, that is a skill. Let’s watch you try.”

 

With that, Tessa and Scott go back to their marks on the floor and get back in position. It’s her with her arms around his neck and his arms around her waist (or technically the top of her ass if she wants to be precise about it), forehead to forehead, standing and breathing together. That’s it.

“See and that’s where you have to start feeling it,” Marie-France says from outside the shot. “Feel it so we can see it.”

Scott moves his hands further down her ass and breathes in deeply; she does the same. 

“Now think about the love you have for each other, the trust and the passion,” Marie continues and Tessa lets herself follow the direction, allows herself to accept the somewhat scary feeling of being-in-love with him again and tries to find the joy in it. The happiness that goes bone deep when he _does_ touch her, the moments when she can believe, just for a second, that he might, maybe, just feel the same way about her. His fingertips dig into her skin as he exhales, his breath warm on her cheeks. She’s looking at his chin but she can see him smiling from the corners of her eyes and it’s suddenly hard to catch her breath.

“That’s it,” Marie-France says. They did nothing. “C’est parfait _._ ”

“Really?” Scott says, not moving.

“Actually, yeah,” Greg chimes in. “I’d say copy that, we’re good. It’s a wrap, guys.”

 

And apparently that’s how you make a music video.

 

With that task done, they are carted back to the villa where Shana and Deric are having lunch in the living room. They don’t seem half as happy with the day’s proceedings though. 

“It’s not going so great, man,” Deric says after Scott asks what’s up. “We’re not...I don’t know, I guess we’re not all that great at creating stuff together.”

Tessa sits next to Shana as she pushes around her grilled veggies, looking grim.

“We would be just fine if someone wouldn’t talk down every idea their partner has for being cheesy and lame,” Shana says pointedly, sounding even more prissy with her British accent. She won’t look up from her zucchini.

“God, don’t gimme that passive aggressive shit, Shana,” Deric grumbles and sets his cutlery down on the table with some force. “I’m trying to figure out how to make it cool and you’re not working with me at all.”

Oh boy, it’s probably good that all the cameras are out still shooting Jeff and Justin and Kaitlyn and Andrew’s videos. The producers would have a field day with this emerging fight.

 

“But it’s not cool. You’re not a gangster rapper and I’m not your slutty side-piece twerking in front of you,” Shana says. “Do you know how stupid it is to perpetuate that stereotype?”

Tessa shoots a sideways glance at Scott, who makes a face at her like he regrets very much having asked.

“Oh my God, can you stop?” Deric groans. “Not everything is a fucking march on Washington.”

“I can’t believe you,” Shana says, sounding livid and hollow at the same time and then she leaves the table without clearing the plate. 

 

The silence that follows is the most awkward thing Tessa has experienced in the villa so far, and that includes everything that has happened between her and Scott.

“She’s completely off the rails with that activism shit,” Deric hollers eventually, looking at both of them like he expects encouragement. “So, I’m not a fucking Black Panther, let a dude live.” Deric keeps looking at them, not so much at Tessa as he does Scott, because he’s the man and guys stick together.

“Honestly, I don’t feel qualified or educated enough to say anything about that, buddy,” Scott replies apologetically. “But if you want help with choreography, I guess T and I can maybe help a little?”

“Yeah, maybe we’ll take you up on that,” Deric sighs. “But first I gotta go and say I’m sorry.”

It sounds like he’s not actually sorry at all.

Deric leaves and Scott looks deeply uncomfortable, a notion Tessa shares. 

“Let’s go listen to some music to pick for the dance,” she says quickly, wanting to leave this unfortunate scene in the past as quickly as possible. He follows with no complaints. 

 

Picking a song is a lot harder than she thought it would be. Not because they can’t agree on anything but because they agree on too much. They bring ten different songs into dance rehearsal with Marie and Patch the next day, unable to even narrow it down to five.

“Help,” Tessa says, showing the skaters the list of hopefuls they had put together the previous night.

“Actually,” Marie starts and smiles a little, “and you can’t tell the others about this, but Patrice and I have been talking a bit about something we think could maybe work for you, something we would very selfishly like to see you dance to.”

“Oh,” Tessa very nearly squeaks. “That’s so nice.”

“Just give it a listen and see if it could work,” Marie goes on, already moving to connect her iPod to the boombox by the mirror. “If it’s a fit, you’re already gonna have a good direction for costumes and everything.”

“By which she means, she already thought of something you should wear,” Patrice says with a wink and Tessa giggles. Scott just looks like he can’t believe what’s happening. That his skating heroes liked what they were doing enough to get inspired to pick music for them. Which is a perfect fit right at the first note. Tessa knows the second she looks at him and he starts swaying to it.

 

“Don't talk just hold me closer, let me sit on top of your knee,” a raspy, low woman’s voice sings over a sexy, slow old-timey mix of strings and trumpets. Nina Simone. “Go ahead and take care of business, for me, for me, for me. Oh Lord, don't keep me waiting, be as firm as can be.” Oh yeah, that’s a good one. Before they’re even through the song once, Scott has already pulled her up to her feet and started moving her. On the second repeat, Marie and Patch are starting to adjust things, suggesting turns and twists and even managing to work in a lift. Working together is just as fun, if not more, than the day before. It just flows, the music, the movements, the ideas. Working with Scott like that and choreographing in earnest is magnificent, it’s everything she never thought would make her feel fulfilled. 

 

(Or maybe it’s everything she was scared of feeling, to let dancing back in her life even if it can never be its center again...even if she’ll be forever at the sidelines watching other people move. But then she’d still get to create, she would still get to leave her mark, even if it would be somebody else’s legs dancing her steps. Maybe that would be enough after all.)

 

Four hours later, they have finalized the choreography. Tessa has burning legs, too, but that’s a price she is willing to pay. For the last hour, Greg has been getting footage for the show and when Jeremy takes Tessa and Scott into Georgetown to shop for their costumes, he rides along as well. Marie has been making herself pretty clear on what outfits she’s envisioning for their number; a red tight dress for Tessa and a black, unassuming ensemble for Scott, so it’s “sexy and classy without being flashy” and Tessa finds herself agreeing wholeheartedly. 

 

Plus, it’s so nice to get out of the house for once. They overdo it a bit on the sightseeing, stretching out the time it takes to find a shop that sells anything other than souvenirs and floral shirts on purpose, so they can take in the quaint little restaurants and bars lining the streets, and Tessa is really happy that the camera is there, because she can take Scott’s hand and walk around like the most touristy of tourists, discovering a new town holding the hand of the man she loves. It’s not the ideal way for this to happen but it’s happening and the sun is shining, so she is okay with it for the time being.

 

She’s a bit sad when they finally walk by a store that has a pretty perfect dress right there on display and they have to get in and get it. Scott’s outfit is easily assembled from their stock as well. Scott eyes her for a while, after she comes out with the dress on, and she wonders if that’s a bad sign.

“Not good?” she asks him, looking down on herself to see if she’s missed something ill-fitting in the changing room mirror.

“No,” he says. “It’s...I like it. You don’t wear red a lot.”

“It’s not really my colour,” she shrugs. She’s always felt a bit too visible in red, a bit too loud out there in the world. He laughs, almost sardonically.

“Yeah, no,” he says and takes a step towards her to brush his fingertips lightly over the spaghetti straps. “That’s _absolutely_ your colour.” 

 

The thing is, Greg doesn’t have a permit to shoot in the store and he wouldn’t want to give the dress away anyway, so he hasn’t come in. He’s taking a cigarette break outside somewhere. Which is why Scott has no business looking down at her like he does. Like she’s dinner and he’s been starving forever. Like he’s getting lost in the sight of her. And he _absolutely_ has no business saying what he says next either.

“I don’t know how to get through this week, T,” he breathes, still enraptured by that strap on her shoulder, running it between his thumb and index finger absentmindedly. 

 

_What the hell, Scott?_

 

“What do you mean?” she asks him, her patience with his strange behaviour wearing very thin. Instead of answering, he hooks his fingers around the strap until it’s caught within his fist. And pulls her with it, his other hand landing on her face, cupping it, caressing, light as a feather. 

“I missed seeing you dance,” he says, which isn’t an answer but distracts her from her annoyance anyway. “You’re a terrific dancer.”

“You’re not so bad yourself,” she tells him but her voice comes out shaky and a little bit pathetic. 

 

The tension doesn’t fade. Even when he lets her go, releases her dress and says something she doesn’t quite hear through the rumble of blood rushing past her ears, there’s still that energy between them, crackling with static, with sparks. It’s still there when they leave the store and reunite with Greg. And Tessa thinks she has a window. Maybe, if he was actually serious, if this moment was actually real, she could maybe use this week’s challenge to finally get somewhere. And so she forms a plan.

“Can you hang out here for a second?” she asks the guys as they move underneath a restaurant’s patio for some shade. “I gotta grab some tampons from the drug store.”

 

She’s got enough tampons to last her three periods but they don’t know that. When she joins them again, it’s with Trojans in her bag. Because no one can ever accuse Tessa Virtue of going to battle unprepared. 

 

Phase One of her great big battle plan consists of walking around their bedroom that night in her underwear, complaining about the heat and then innocently asking if it’s okay that she sleeps in her bralette and panties. Scott simply nods, but the look on his face and how he flips the bedside lamp off before she’s even ducked under her covers encourages her to move on to Phase Two in the morning. 

 

It’s really quite ingenious. Dance rehearsal is so convenient for an attempt at seduction, she almost has to laugh. The song Marie-France has chosen does the rest. (Bless Marie and Patch, seriously.) 

“Go ahead and take care of business for me,” Nina Simone croons. “In all my life no-one has touched me so close, nor made me feel so sweet.”

 

The whole day, during the morning training and the evening training they’ve scheduled around filming some more talking heads interviews, Tessa presses herself close to her fake-boyfriend-dance-partner whenever the choreography allows and doesn’t stop even when Greg drops in on them to get some more b-roll and doesn’t stop either when Marie-France and Patrice check in on them for some last minute directions.

“Good job, guys,” Marie says before they leave them again. “Great faces, both of you. Scott especially, looks like you want to...what do you say? _Devour_ her. Keep it up. But don’t go too long, it’s already past ten, save up your strength for the competition tomorrow. Really fantastic work, you two!”

 

The door closes, leaving them alone again, Tessa’s head snaps back to Scott’s and she smirks at him. 

“What are you doing?” he asks her darkly.

“Nothing,” she says innocently, blinking at him from under her lashes and licking her lips for good measure.

“Tess,” he warns, tightening his grip on her in the dance hold.

“We’re just dancing, Scott,” she says. “Aren’t we?” 

It’s a challenge he doesn’t meet, like she knew he wouldn’t. He just keeps staring at her and squares his jaw, something fiery pushing its way across his features, something competitive, almost vicious. 

“Well then,” he rasps and sharply digs his fingernails into her bare back. “Let’s dance.” (And maybe he’s taking the challenge after all.)

 

Scott waits a beat, until the song they have on repeat catches on the chorus again and swiftly gets back into the choreography, only that his turns are so much sharper now, his hold on her this much firmer. He huffs and puffs as they cross the floor, taking such large steps that occasionally, he’s pretty much carrying her, dragging her so her feet don’t even touch the ground and she loses herself for a while there in the way he takes control, how he takes command of her body like it’s an extension of his own. She almost forgets that she came into this with a mission, but she gladly remembers before that one move they do, a tango one, where she hooks her leg around his hip and he pulls her closer to bend her backwards, which is the moment where she adds a small but pronounced extra swivel to her hips, far enough out to push up against his crotch and while doing so, brings her hand from where it’s gracefully extended away from her up to his head to grab a fistful of his hair and _pull._

 

And fuck, if he doesn’t react to it like lightning. He makes a strangled sound, north of a whimper and south of a growl and rips her up to him, scratching a hard line up her back as he does, one that will be still red in the morning, and then hugs her to his body. Like he had that night in bed, his full length pressed against her, front smashed up against front. She embraces him as she embraces the moment, slotting her head against his clavicle bone, breathing into his neck. He holds her so tightly she can feel every single shiver run through his body. And damn him if he ever tries to act like there isn’t a part in him that _likes_ this. Even if he’s holding onto himself so tightly, she can feel it in every taut muscle pressed against her; he’s all tension, from his thighs to his chest, to his arms wrapped around her.

“Don’t do this to me,” he rumbles into her ear, his lips wet against the shell of it.

“Do what to you, Scott?” she breathes and hopes it sounds a little like a moan.

 

And before she can react to it, he has moved his arms around on her. Next thing she knows, her feet aren’t touching the ground anymore as she’s elevated, legs split around his groin and he’s carrying her quick-footed, holding her by her ass until she’s hitting something with her back and finds herself trapped between the wall and his firm body. Each laboured breath he takes resonates in her chest, each heartbeat aligns with his, frantic and getting away from them, and when he thrusts his hips forward, just once, she thinks she might have played herself. He won’t do anything else, though, he just holds her there against the wall in a death grip, his head locked in her neck and does nothing but breathe in her ear. Yeah, she definitely played herself. 

“I’m gonna go,” he whispers, finally, which is the literal opposite of what she had wanted to hear from him at the end of her mission.

 

She’s shell-shocked when he puts her back on her feet gently, runs his hands over her shoulders, and then touches his lips to her forehead. 

“You drive me absolutely crazy,” he whispers as he leans out, taking his hands off of her, and she strains to make contact, to read what he’s thinking, to understand what he is saying—what it all means, what just happened and how he’s reacting to her, then and now, but she doesn’t catch his eye. He doesn’t look at her as he turns around and bolts, leaving her confused and throbbing.

 

She doesn’t find him in their room after she has collected herself enough to brave the walk back from the tennis court to the villa in the dark of night that has fallen over her. As hard as she tries, she can’t keep herself awake to wait him out. She drops off, falling asleep to her heart still beating out of her chest. Her dreams are hazy and erratic, switching from one scene to the next, the only thing they have in common being Scott and his body and his voice. She is drenched when she startles awake from chasing an orgasm in her sleep that her dream couldn’t materialize. He’s lying beside her, fast asleep, unmoving like a rock. _Fuck_ , she’s so worked up, she could burst. She needs to do something about it or she will rightly explode.

 

She deliberates stalking off to the shower and then for a very long moment tries to talk herself into waking him up and just climbing onto his lap to get it fucking over with, but that feels wrong and like harrassment and she’s still not sure if he wants to sleep with her or not, so she can’t wake him up. She can’t leave the bed either though, because that would maybe wake him up after all and when he’s up, there’s no telling what she might do. So after a second, she sneaks her hand down her body, past her bra and down her panties (there are no more pyjamas from now on, she’s decided) and finds the spot where she’s aching, working her fingers on her as subtly and quietly as she can.

 

She just needs to come, just...come really quickly and then she can go back to sleep. But it’s not going to be quick because she’s so high strung, her body is completely overwhelmed. That’s not to say it doesn’t feel good, because it does. Awake like this, she can sift through the moments of the day, of the dancing and him... _fuck_ , him pushing her against the wall like that. He could’ve so easily, so so easily just done it there. 

 

He’s strong enough, he can keep her in the air and rut into her until she sees stars. God, if she only knew what he was like in bed. If just once he’d take pity on her and _show_ her. Maybe if she knew she could move on. Maybe she can only get him out of her system if they go all the way. God, she wants to go all the way. She twitches, having hit her spot there and she can come now, just needs a little bit _more_. Just that one last bit to get her over the edge. That memory of him hitting the wall with her, boxing her in.

 _You drive me absolutely crazy_ , he’d said. _Don’t do this to me._

 

Ah. _Yes._ She shudders, building up, and she can’t help how she breathes out on a low rumble, imagining him inside her, firm and hungry.

 

“Tessa.”

 

It’s a whisper in the dark, little more than a strangled breath. _Oh no. Oh fuck, no._

 

She freezes, her fingers on her skin going rigid and numb as her breath dies in her chest, from shock and from how quickly her arousal dampens in face of the humiliation that is sure to follow. She needs to do something, she needs to—

“No, don’t stop,” he whimpers and then his hand is on her forearm, shaking a bit but holding on. “Please, let me…”

 

 _Holy crap_. “Yes,” she whispers but it barely carries. He heard her all the same. 

 

She doesn’t dare breathe when he gets closer, running his palm down her arm which still leads into her panties. Scott buries his head in her neck as he keeps on his downward trail and she spreads her knees apart for him, so he can touch her however he wants. Next to her ear, his breath catches when he’s _there_ at long last, and she keens with blind pleasure as he works his digits around hers, getting them slick. This might be the most erotic thing she has ever experienced. Not just because of his fingers curling into her heat but the way he breathes into her hair so hard and heavy, she thinks he might pass out. She wants him so badly. She can't believe this is real. Oh God, please, don't let this be a dream.

"Wanna make you feel good," he murmurs softly, drunkenly, and teases her with his hand on hers until she sees stars at the back of her eyes, he's doing so well.

 

 _Take care of business for me_ , indeed. She mewls, high and needy.

 

“My God,” Scott damn well near moans, all choked up and struggling for air, and it’s so hot she almost comes. She mutters his name dizzily and that’s all the encouragement he needs apparently, because half a moment later he’s moved her hand to the side and is pushing his fingers into her. He goes slow on the first one, slow and gentle and she bucks up into it quick enough for her hips to snap audibly. Scott growls at her eagerness, almost a chuckle in there, but a hungry, somewhat feral one. And then he starts moving his hand. 

 

 _In all my life no-one has touched me so close,_  it resounds in her head at the way he touches her. _Nor made me feel so sweet._ He knows what he's doing. His fingers are inside her, finding their way, making her sing. _Be as firm as you can be._ And he's wanted it, he wanted this so bad, his voice was all but a croak. _Please, let me..._

 

Heaven and hell, she doesn’t last. It’s ridiculous. It’s tragic, most of all. Finally something is actually going on, finally, he is _touching_ her...and she is done for in moments. She cries out, yelps as it hits her and her vision whites out even behind closed lids. She’s coming so hard, she could cry. And, oh wait, because she is pathetic and needy and a total loser, she does. She’s actually fucking crying by the time he pulls his fingers out and she twitches helplessly on the aftershocks. 

 

His hand is gone from her in a second (and knowing him he is carelessly wiping off his fingers somewhere) before he puts it back on her lower abdomen, stroking his flat palm over her stomach while she comes down and then moves it higher to play with her belly button ring which nearly has her keeling over, more sensitive now than before her orgasm. And fuck it all to hell, why is she still _crying_?!

 

His nose bumps against her neck, he’s running it up and down there, and then he chuckles so his whole body moves. Great, so he can laugh about her with that mouth but he won’t kiss her. Not even her neck, not even her temple. He’s done that before, he could do it again. Why won’t he just kiss her?

 

“Don't laugh at me,” she pleads and means to sound angry but it just comes out pathetic.

“I'm not laughing at you,” he whispers and foregoes her belly button to wrap the arm snugly around her, getting a good grip to pull her in. “I...I think you’re amazing.”

“Then why won't you kiss me?” she asks him, even if it’s not smart. Even if she should try to carry on with her plan, because now’s the time! Now is literally the time. Why must she fuck it up by _talking about it?_

“Tess...don’t,” he breathes, a little pained.

“Do you want me to...?” she asks quickly before she’s ruined it entirely, bringing her hand from where it had clutched her bra helplessly before to his chest, bunching up the fabric of his cotton shirt between her fingers and then trailing down—but he catches her wrist and stops her.

 

“No. You don’t need to—”

“What if I want to?” she cuts in.

“Tessa, no, please,” he begs, literally begs. That’s how much he doesn’t want her to touch him. It feels like a rusty knife twisting her gut. “I can’t...Let's just go to sleep, okay? Let's just...sleep.”

He can’t be serious, he just can’t think that it’s okay to try and wiggle away now, after _this._ After what just happened. She’s still not quite over her head splitting apart from how fast he made her erupt and he’s already trying to get away? Does he really care for her that little?

“Don’t you dare leave me alone now,” she hisses and he winces. 

 

But at least he stays. He keeps his arms around her and she forces herself to try and go to sleep. She could go clean up but with his track record she’s afraid he’ll be gone by the time she gets back, so she plucks at his shoulder until he’s on his back and she lies down on his chest. It would be wonderful if he wasn’t pulling away already, if she couldn’t feel it in his body under her, how he wants to run for the hills. Trying to sleep is a ridiculous endeavor, she is well aware, especially with his heartbeat racing under her ear, but eventually, after an eternity being quiet in the dark with him, she sinks, lets oblivion take her, and is already afraid of the morning in that last moment she’s conscious before her senses leave her.

 

Tessa wakes up to his eyes staring at her. She sort of expected him to look different in the morning, considering it’s the morning after he made her come with his hand, but he still looks the same. It’s still just Scott there on the pillow next to her head. With his messy Scott-bed-hair and his pointy Scott-nose and the Scott-furrow of his brow when he is thinking about something, casting his eyes down a moment after she wakes up in his very Scott-way of not being able to look at people when stuff gets hard.

 

“Were you watching me sleep?” she asks.

“Can we talk?” he asks, ignoring her question.

“Sure.” 

He doesn’t have to say it, though, she already knows what’s coming.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I shouldn’t have done that.” _And there it is._

“Scott—,” she tries, even if it’s useless. He won’t give her a chance, he won’t even give her that.

“No, please. It was wrong and stupid,” he laments. “And I shouldn’t have done it.” It’s like he’s slapping her across the face with every word and he doesn’t even care. “We never should’ve...there are lines. Lines we do not cross. And I shouldn’t have crossed them, I’m sorry.”

 

“It’s okay,” she says, trying to shut her feelings off, to let go and be empty, anything so she doesn’t have to be aware of how her chest is splitting open at his rejection. But wasn’t she just asking for it? Like a pathetic, naive little girl. “It’s fine, it was just...a favour.”

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” he says and he sounds disgusted with himself. How could she delude herself into thinking she’d be worth it for him to be brave? To not run away as soon as things get complicated? It’s not happening. Not for her. Never for her. After all these years.

 

“It’s okay,” she says and wishes she were anywhere but here.

“Tess,” he tries but not hard enough to even touch her.

“It’s really okay, okay?” she says and sits up, trying to figure out how she can feel like she’s split open from pain when her body is totally fine.

“Okay. I’m sorry,” he repeats.

“You don’t need to apologise,” she says sharply and scrambles out from under the blankets. She can’t stay here and listen to him beg for forgiveness for putting his hands on her, something she has wanted more than anything since she had the faintest idea about how other people’s hands on your body could be a good thing, a fucking fantastic thing. “I’m going for a run. I’ll see you at the dress rehearsal.”

 

She gets changed in the bathroom, avoiding the mirrors and she prays to God that no one is up yet and snooping around in the yard, because it’s ridiculously obvious that she’s crying. She can’t seem to stop. But she’d prefer crying from having an orgasm courtesy of Scott Moir over getting her heart broken by Scott Moir. _Again._ Good Lord, why does she never learn? And how did this night take such a rapid turn for the worst?

 

“T, it’s not that I don’t…,” Scott says immediately when she comes out of the bathroom, her head tilted down under her Blue Jays cap so he won’t see her eyes. He’s leaning forward in bed but it seems it’s too big an effort to leave it, to go to her, to make it better. (Why does this still hurt?) “I just don’t think we should be doing this. I don’t want to mess us up.” 

 

And the one thing she probably hates more than him not wanting her, is the fact that he acts like it’s because he doesn’t want to ‘ruin the friendship,’ which is such a lie. That’s not a reason. She’s read enough books to know that that’s crap. (Namely ‘ _He’s Just Not That Into You_ ’ where it says in black and white that it’s a non-reason and a crappy excuse. If he wanted her, he would have her. If he wanted her, he wouldn’t hide behind some bullshit veneer of “I don’t want to mess us up.”)

“Look at us, Scott,” she says, in the door out to the yard and finally looks at him, tear-streaked cheeks and all. “We already _are._ ” 

 

Then she runs.

 

The next time she lets him see her is at the dress rehearsal. He tries to lead in with something but she cuts him off.

“I changed the music,” she tells him matter-of-factly and he makes a face like he doesn’t understand. Tessa covers the mic on her shirt with her fist (because Scott was late as usual and Greg wasn’t). “I don’t want to dance to ‘ _Take care of business for me,_ ’” she says and gives him a pointed enough look for him to understand exactly _why._ “So I changed the music. I already tried it, it works.”

“Okay,” Scott nods, looking at her like she’s a bomb he has no idea how to defuse. “What are we dancing to?”

“Carmen,” she declares. And they do. 

 

When they tell Marie-France and run it through for her once before the taping, she loves it (even if they ended up dancing to their own song after all), suggests a slight twist on the final pose and by the end of the performance, it’s not Carmen who dies but her lover. Scott winds up collapsing forward onto Tessa on the last hurrah of the music, leaning on her side and clutching her hips for dear life. She doesn’t help him up when the applause is over. 

 

They win the challenge by a landslide. 

 

(Jeffrey and Justin are excited for them, Kaitlyn is pretending to be excited for them and Shana and Deric look like they have their own stuff going on. Tessa doesn’t care about any of it.)

 

“For Patrice and me,” Marie-France says, giving her final guest-judging verdict, “we felt the strongest connection as well as the best artistic expression in Tessa and Scott. Their dance was daring and brave, to go with a classical piece and to change it up at such short notice. And there were definitely sparks. A completely genuine connection.” Marie’s words sound like mockery, even if that is not their intent at all. “Very well done. And I must say I agree with the couples regarding Shana and Deric. On the dance floor, they just did not harmonise. So, with a heavy heart, we have to give them our vote no.”

 

Tessa can see it etched on Shana’s flawless, stony face. She already knows that her and Deric’s statement won’t change anybody’s mind. _What’s Love Got To Do With It?!_ is over for them. (Tessa can’t bring herself to care about that either.) When they have drinks later in the kitchen, Tessa stays for as long as she must to look polite and hugs Shana and Deric for a long time. She tells them she is going to miss them both so much and that she is very sad that they’re leaving.

 

That night, when Scott closes the curtains in their room and takes his blanket over to the pull-out couch with a muttered “I think it’s better if I sleep here for now,” Tessa wishes she could trade places with them.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a mean cliff-hanger before disappearing for over a week, I am aware and I am sorry. Please don't hate me?


	7. Makes My Pulse React

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear friends...I have no graphic tie-in today, I hope you will forgive me. Instead I got some more than 11K words, artfully and perfectly beta'd by KIM & KEL and encouraged to the ends of the earth by the wonderful FAIRWINDS09.
> 
> They are heroes, please praise them with me!! I wrote most of this on a ferry from Dubrovnik to Split, so they had a lot of work this chapter!
> 
> In other news, I am back from my vacation to Croatia. It was a DREAM!! If you ever get the chance...go there, it's magical!
> 
> But now...here it is...chapter seven. I am very much looking forward to your thoughts!

“Geez, buddy, you’re a godsend,” Alec bellows, patting Greg on the back hard as he brings by rolls, pastries, and take-out coffee from the little bakery just up the shore. The guys so rarely get out of the production rental, a midday caffeine delivery is always met with disproportionate gratefulness that Greg admittedly indulges in. He loves doing nice stuff for other people, that’s just how he’s wired. Alec and Other-Greg are always very appreciative. The two of them are the on-site editors, housed in a two story townhouse in Georgetown where the internet connection is the most stable, so they can confer more easily with the execs in Canada. It’s just that besides the internet connection, nothing else really works, least of all the air conditioning, which is why they have started to not-so-affectionately refer to their makeshift office as _Mordor._  

 

“I don’t know how you can get hot drinks in you around here, actually,” Greg muses, watching Other-Greg dig into the chocolate croissant he bought specifically to cater to the other man’s sweet tooth. 

“Addiction makes you do strange things,” Alec says gravely. “So, what do you got for us today? I swear if I have to cut down another ten minutes of Kaitlyn cooing at Andrew I’m going to jump out of the window.”

“None of that today,” Greg replies and hands over the SD cards and copy lists Rani, his unit’s production assistant, made. “But you’re not gonna like what’s on there much, either.”

“Aw, don’t say it,” Alec sighs. “T and S?” It’s their production shorthand for Tessa and Scott.

“Still on the rocks,” Greg shrugs quite unhappily.

“Did Erica get back to you on how she wants it edited?” Other-Greg asks, taking his place at the workspace in the corner, waking up his two screens to start working again after his break.

 

“She said not to treat them differently from the others,” Greg tells him. “We’re not gonna be deliberately fooling audiences. If they look like they’re not together, then that’s what it is.”

“They did so great the first few weeks,” Alec sighs. “Now for four days it’s been just…weird.”

“It _is_ weird, right?” Other-Greg agrees, sounding way more invested than strictly necessary. “Is it weird in person?” the other man looks at Greg expectantly, rolling a bit more into the room on his office chair. The other men don’t come in direct contact with the contenders or the rest of the on-site crew really, so Greg is basically their window into the world…the emissary traveling between Mordor and the Shire, so to speak. At least he can provide some entertainment and scoop that way if he can’t do anything about the heat. 

 

He pulls up a chair, thinking he might as well tell them, get the gossip out of the way before he shares the good news he’s most excited to deliver, even more than the chocolate buns and puff pastries he brought.

“Honestly, I don’t know what happened between them,” Greg says, surprising himself by how sincerely distraught he sounds about it. He knows Tessa and Scott are the fake couple, they all know, but they still feel like they’re his special babies, because he is their assigned cameraman and…well, there _is_ something going on with them, right? You’d have to be deaf and blind not to realise that. And even then, you’d probably feel the electricity.

 

They might be the fake couple, but there is real love there. There has to be. Nobody can fake it that well. Not Scott, with how his whole body radiates want whenever Tessa is near, so much so that Greg has half a mind to ring up his wife at home whenever he’s had to film T and S make out. And not Tessa, with the way she looks at Scott, especially when he can’t see…like all she’s ever wanted in life is to be close to him. 

 

Okay, yeah, so Greg might be a sentimental sap, that’s entirely possible, he just thinks it would be romantic if they would fall in love, alright? Realistically, he knows that they won’t. There is no money for them, contractually, if they enter a real-life relationship. Even more so, if they _win_ as the fake-couple and are then revealed as a real couple after all, they are liable for fraud and Greg isn’t entirely sure the production company wouldn’t go to court over that. So, it’s better for them not to get into anything. Still, the thing is he, Greg, has had a front row seat to everything they’ve decided to put out there and he’s seen some things…things he didn’t get on camera that made him go _hmmmm._  

 

They started as early as the first day, when Scott slapped Tessa’s ass hard and she looked ready to pop in a very non-angry way, followed by what he witnessed outside the clothing store just a week ago. He’d seen how they’d stood in the middle of the boutique floor and Scott had pulled Tess in, putting his hand on her cheek. Greg had legitimately held his breath, thinking they might kiss. They didn’t, of course, but still. He had texted Alec and Other-Greg all the same. Not to gush or anything but for competition reasons. Because no one could blame them for starting a betting pool. Two betting pools, actually. One that was about who would win (T&S versus K&A, as it stood, with Alec and Greg rooting for T&S) and the other was about if or when T&S would get caught having sex on the beach somewhere and throw the competition. Needless to say, Greg’s apparently high chances of winning that second pot with his prediction of ‘some time before the fourth week’ have turned to dust recently, with the way Tessa and Scott are acting now that the fourth week has arrived. 

 

The three men skip through the material from K&A as well as J&J (Justin and Jeffrey) and then devote more time than needed to scrutinise what new stuff Greg has brought from Tessa and Scott. It’s not pretty. They watch them go from the announcement of the last island challenge (“The Teamwork and Survival Challenge: You will be stranded on a lonely island together and have to survive the jungle for a whole day!”), through two days of survival training. They’re the most tense they’ve ever been. Not that they’re not physically close. They try to keep up appearances. But Tessa is short with Scott and even flinch-y at times, and Scott periodically looks like he’s dying, usually when he hugs Tessa for one reason or the other, burying his face in her hair like he hopes to choke in it. Something went down between them and it wasn’t pretty. Their interaction is strained beneath the veneer of togetherness, strange enough for the camera to pick up. If they were feeling malicious, they could cut this in a way that would have them eliminated by the time the grand finale live show happens.

 

That live show will see the remaining three couples get an audience vote within the first ten minutes, and then two couples will move into the games round, going head to head for the big win. If Alec and Other-Greg edit what Greg just brought them a certain way, they could probably decide that vote from where they sit. But that would give the game away as well, maybe. Sure, they had cut the other episodes to cast reasonable doubt on the couples that had been eliminated but they had always tried to balance that out with questionable moments for the other pairs too. So that’s the path they will take for T&S too, now. No special treatment. No less or more scrutiny than any of the other couples had to endure. The audience will make up its own mind on the matter anyway.

 

Not that Greg doesn’t know that the general public basically made up its mind when episode two aired in Canada just the other day. Other-Greg had complained that his girlfriend was badgering him on the phone on behalf of her book-club, whose members had caught the ‘ _What’s Love?!_ ’-bug (much like big parts of Canada had, too). 

“She keeps asking me who the fake couple is,” he had lamented. “I say I can’t tell her and she says I don’t really love her.”

“Tell me about it,” Alec had sighed. “Mine says it’s like being with a CIA agent. I just keep telling her that I’ll never work again if I blab, not to mention getting my ass sued to Mexico and back.”

“Who do they think are the fakes?” Greg had wondered, just out of curiosity. 

“Justin and Jeffrey,” Alec shrugged. “Anita thinks they’re too cutesy to be real.”

“Yeah, Mona’s book club is convinced Kaitlyn and Andrew are fake because they’re trying so hard.”

 

“No one I know doubts Tessa and Scott,” Greg had offered.

“It’s the way you film them, man,” Other-Greg had patted his shoulder appreciatively, but Greg had shook his head.

“I’d take the credit if I could,” he’d replied. “But I’m afraid it’s all them.”

“My wife ships it,” Alec told them then.

“She does what now?” Other-Greg asked.

“Her and her book club, they are like…going on the internet and tweeting about Tessa and Scott, about how perfect they are together, that their relation _ship_ is so great. Hence the ‘shipper’-terminology. They make gifs and everything.”

“Isn’t that pronounced ‘jif’?” Other-Greg had mused.

“Dude, I’m not gonna get into this with you right now,” Alec had groaned, making Greg laugh. 

 

“Either way,” the cameraman had cut in, “I think it’s pretty clear that the couple that’s actually bullshit is making all the others look like they’re the liars. It’s pretty fantastic for the format.”

“It also makes you think…” Alec had given them all a pointed look. The same one he gives them now, after Greg tells them he has no idea what happened between Tessa and Scott to make them so awkward with each other all week.

 

“They had sex,” he states. “That’s why they’re weird.”

“I don’t think so,” Other-Greg muses. “Wouldn’t they be happy if they had sex?”

“Not if they wanna win,” Alec says. “Or if one of them doesn’t really want the other and it was just a rash, stupid mistake.”

“It’s a pity,” Other-Greg sighs, sounding almost wistful. “They can’t really be together even after, can they?”

“I have no idea what’s going on there, to be honest,” Greg shrugs. “I see them every day and I can’t make sense of it. There’s something huge there, but sometimes it seems like they don’t know what to do with it themselves.”

“They did okay in survival training,” Other-Greg says, nodding to the monitor that is playing back Scott learning to build a fire with flint stones.

“They pulled it together for the camera,” Greg tells them, voice dropped low because theoretically, he is not supposed to divulge this information even to them. “When they’re off, they don’t talk to each other. As soon as we’re rolling, though, Scott’s got his hands all over her, it’s weird.”

 

“How do you think they’ll do on the lonely island?” Alec asks.

“Honestly, I have no idea,” Greg answers sincerely. “We’re taking the speed boat in the morning; it’ll just be them, Corey, Rani, and me in our little section of the jungle. We’ll see. But this actually brings me to the good news I got for you guys today—while we’re all on the island, Erica agreed to let you spend your days off in the villa. Air conditioning, the pool, the beach, you get the whole thing to yourselves…you can finally get your taste of The Shire!”

 

All speculation about the true nature of Tessa and Scott’s relationship pales in comparison to the severity of the other men’s reaction to this news, and Greg grins from ear to ear as they roar their thanks. God, he loves making people happy. 

 

 

Tessa sits on the bow of the speedboat that is taking them to a small uninhabited island about an hour off shore, feeling her skin burn in the sun. She’s lathered on sunscreen thick enough to serve as a second layer of skin, but she knows it’s useless. Even the tan she has gotten from being in the Caymans for nearly four weeks can’t save her from baking under the cloudless sky. It’s not the first day that the heat has seemed to box her in, weigh her down as if she was stuck in cement shoes, but it’s definitely the worst so far. Incidentally it’s also the worst it’s been with Scott. Since the last elimination they haven’t made a single step forward in addressing whatever it is that Scott finds so appalling about her that he can’t stand sleeping next to her anymore. 

 

By the second night, she had gotten really angry at him. Because it was unfair that he was treating her like some sort of sex fiend when he’d been the one to make the move. She had felt (and still feels) appropriately ashamed for getting off while he was there, but she didn’t think it was fair that he kept his distance from her when they were on their own, as if she would force herself on him at any moment. She hadn’t done that. And he wasn’t so goddamn innocent. 

 

 _Please, let me…_  

 

Those had been his words. His choice. So, while she was getting angry at him, he had gotten angry at her for being angry at him and by the third night, they weren’t speaking in private. Of course he was still pretending for the cameras, still tactile, still glued to her side, kissing her face and holding her hand. But he hasn’t kissed her with tongue (as if he believed fully making out with her for the cameras would encourage her neediness) and whenever they’re alone, he takes three steps away from her. 

 

Four days after _the incident_ , once they had been given their new challenge, she was at the point where she barely talked to him in front of the camera too. She knew it looked bad, and the more she retreated into herself, the more Scott pushed, caressed her face, and whispered sweet nothings to her, just loud enough for his collar mic to catch. She felt disgusting. Mostly because her body still folded into his whenever he was close. She was furious with him but her skin tingled when he kissed her shoulder like nothing had happened, the traitorous thing. Her stomach still dips when he slots in behind her on the boat, slings his arms loosely around her waist, and puts his chin on her shoulder. She doesn’t have to look to know that Greg has mounted the camera to film their approach of the island.

 

“We’re gonna have to get some more sunscreen on you,” Scott mumbles. “Your skin is way too hot.” 

 

Tessa nods at his pretend concern, moving, despite herself, so his mouth lands on her neck beneath her ear. He pulls her closer. “It’s beautiful,” he says at the view in front of them. The other two remaining couples are approaching the island from other sides, each of them getting a bay to land on and then their own little spot of jungle to film their challenge on. Theirs is particularly pretty, Tessa thinks. But then again, she hasn’t seen what they are giving Kaitlyn and Andrew and Justin and Jeffrey to work with. She wonders how they’ll look in their final challenge before returning home to Canada to be judged by the public, wonders who the audience will peg for the couple that has to leave just before making it to the big show-down. Wonders if they are hugging each other as tight as her and Scott...if it feels as hollow.

 

“Thanks guys, I got it,” Greg says and Scott unlatches from her and scoots back, like he’s a dog pulled back by a leash. Tessa turns her head and wishes she hadn’t. Because what she sees are three faces painted in pity, and that’s the worst thing ever. Greg has been watching them quizzically all week, while Corey, the sound guy assigned to their little unit, as well as the PA Rani who usually operates by the “be neither seen nor heard”-rule, have only started paying close attention to the state of Tessa and Scott today. But they already seem to know a lot more than Tessa would like. Logically, she knows that all they are aware of is that she and Scott are the pretenders, so they really shouldn’t be giving her pitying side-glances about the way she and her fake boyfriend are having _problems_ , but they are anyway, so what is she supposed to believe they think? She bets she looks like the most ridiculous idiot to them. Like everyone can see that she’s in love with Scott and he’s grossed out by her. Fantastic. 

 

Looking to Scott for help is no use. He won’t do anything to save face now in front of them because it would mean getting close to her and he’s made it clear he never wants to do that again, so Tessa gets onto her wobbly feet, holding on to the side of the boat as it’s rocked by the waves and staggers to Rani on the opposite side.

“I like your dress,” she tells her, to start a conversation, and sits down next to the younger woman. 

“It’s a jumpsuit, actually,” Rani smiles, her dark skin shining beautifully, making her lemon-yellow onesie look radiant in its pastel colour. “And it’s got pockets!”

“Oh, that’s so great,” Tessa nods, feigning slightly more enthusiasm than she feels. “Where did you get it?”

“Got it in Delhi, last time I visited my family,” the girl replies and Tessa makes a face.

“Then I can’t copy the look,” she mock-pouts and Rani giggles politely. Rani’s humouring her, they both know it. They keep at it until they land on the pearly white beach and help Greg and Corey unload their gear before saying goodbye to their boat-crew. Now Tessa is trapped on a lonely island with a camera crew and the love of her life who wants nothing to do with her, for an entire night. There’s nowhere to go but forward.

 

She presses on. The trek into the jungle is harsh, mostly because the humidity in the foliage rises to what seems like a million degrees and she feels like she’s walking through liquid. Her makeup is gathering at the corners of her eyes, her hair is falling out of her top bun, her clothes stick to her, wet and soggy, and the altitude as they move up on the tree-covered hills is making her short of breath. If it wasn’t all so beautiful to look at, she might just drop down and refuse to keep moving. As it is, the jungle is a sight to behold. 

 

The greenery around them is of such a rich green that she is pretty sure she hasn’t ever seen proper _green_ before today. Above them, there is only sparse light coming through the large leaves and ferns growing from the house-high trees. Everything is in bloom, flowers in all colours of the rainbow lining the way. Scott walks in front of her with a machete, hacking away vines and bushes so she can pass, warning her about roots in the ground, and helping her jump over a few at a certain point. Behind them, Greg is filming. _Of course._

 

Once they’ve arrived at their designated spot, he also films Tessa foraging for berries and Scott expertly build a fire like he’s learned in the survival training. It’s borderline sexist and they’re all aware but she’s too exhausted to put up a fight. She focuses instead on the positive, on the fact that she gets to be on a tropical island in an actual jungle, listening to the clicks and raps and noises that she only knows from the movies so far. She sees pretty yellow birds in the trees above her head and can pretend for a while that she’s a character on _LOST._  

 

It’s beautiful, aesthetically speaking. She can appreciate that. Sure, her heart has been disintegrating for a week now, but maybe getting to experience this is worth it. When would she ever have gone foraging in an actual jungle if not for pretending to be Scott’s girlfriend? And there’s a sentence she never thought she’d think.

 

When she gets back to rejoin Scott and Rani by their extinguished fire, the air is even hotter and more humid than before, if that’s at all possible. Rani looks worse for wear, her long black hair stuck to her face, and Scott has taken off his shirt. As Greg and Corey free themselves of their equipment for a chance to breathe, Tessa hands them all a spare water bottle from her rucksack. (It was either carrying the water bottles or the tent, and she left that task graciously to Scott and his broad back.)

“Stop scratching,” she tells Scott as he goes to town on the mosquito bites on his legs. He’s usually good about it but the heat is getting to him, too. It’s the first thing she’s said directly to him all day.

“It feels like Monsoon season,” Rani muses, handing Tessa an empty plastic bottle, water still running past the corners of her mouth. “There’s a storm coming.”

“Then we should get the fishing bit on camera before it gets ugly,” Greg muses. “And then I’ll see if I can reach Erica on getting us out of here for the night. Doesn’t really make sense to be stuck here during a tropical storm.”

 

The lake in which they are supposed to catch a fish for dinner is even further up the steep hill and once they reach it, their gang of five needs to take a collective break. It’s a truly wondrous, picturesque sight to behold, that little lake with a waterfall at the far end and there is even a cave a few paces up the mountain path that Corey goes to investigate with boyish curiosity. Scott uses his reprieve for a swim in the lake. Tessa watches him absentmindedly as he swims his laps, right until Greg comes back from taking a leak to yell at him.

“Scottie, get outta there,” he hollers from the side, making Scott stop short where he swims and whip his head around so his locks stick to his forehead all funny. “That dam over there is barely enough to hold the water, let alone a guy splashing around in it. You’d be pulled right out to sea down the river there if it broke—and not in one piece.”

 

It’s a bit comical how fast Scott scrambles to get out, spasming forward until he reaches the water’s edge and then crawls out on his hands and knees, all the while looking over his shoulders as if the dam had already started breaking behind him. Tessa would have laughed if she hadn’t been gripped by a white hot panic at the potential of him actually dying from a freak accident involving a broken dam on a deserted island. From fear, she’s moved to help him out of the water, wondering half a second before he takes it, if maybe he’ll refuse the hand she’s holding out for him because he doesn’t want to touch her.

 

His grip on her is tight and he doesn’t move away for once as she pulls him up and stands close to her, looking down at her while she has her hand wrapped around his forearm.

“You gotta be careful,” she breathes and he nods, once again hooking a finger underneath her top-strap, the way he had at the store in the city. He holds her gaze and her shirt for a long moment before he breaks away and turns to the rest of their crew, keeping to the sidelines.

“So let’s catch a fish, huh?” Scott says and that’s what they set out to do. He’s terrible at catching fish. So is Tessa.

 

In the end they wind up faking it. (Mostly because the weather is getting more and more precarious and Erica has phoned in on Greg’s cool-as-hell field-satellite-phone and said that the storm coming in will be vicious. They’ll be picking them up within the next two hours at the beach so they can make it back to the main island in time.) Basically Tessa acts all surprised and gleeful about Scott “catching a fish” and then they attempt to make their way back to the site of Scott’s fire to fry the dried salted fish Rani carries in her backpack having anticipated just this type of situation. 

 

Only they never make it there.

 

The first boom of thunder takes them all by surprise with how loud and immediate it is. Having walked underneath dense foliage all day, none of them have noticed the sky darkening above them, and so the fact that the storm is already so close is a shocking revelation. They quicken their steps as Greg trails behind, trying to get a signal on his sat-phone. He groans when he catches up to them, after finally reaching Erica.

“We gotta hurry, guys,” he calls out, an edge of legitimate fear in his voice. “They can wait at the beach for fifteen minutes, after that it’ll be too dangerous to leave the island. Corey, we might need to leave our gear somewhere.”

“Nope,” Corey says, stubborn. “We got this. Let’s just go. If we cross the river, we’ll make it down to the beach in ten, equipment and all.”

“Fine,” Greg says, shaking his head at the other man’s stubbornness, and Tessa blindly follows them all down the trek. 

 

After another minute or two of stumbling after the crew, Scott comes up from behind her and takes her hand.

“We’ll be fine,” he says to her, eyes cast forward stoically and she isn’t sure that he’s saying it purely for her benefit. She’s concerned, yes, but not scared. He doesn’t seem like he isn’t, though. She squeezes his hand reassuringly and he turns his head to her for a split second. Yeah, he’s _terrified._

 

He pulls her on faster. Just not fast enough. The thunder grows louder and more immediate by the minute. Coming upon the river, they finally realise it has started to rain terribly. Where the branches don’t quite meet over the river to make a canopy of leaves to shield them, the water from above batters down hard. Soaked to the bones and slippery, they have to climb down an incline of rocks in order to cross the creek. All things considered, Corey and Rani are nimble and quick, climbing up the other side with their gear, as Scott takes longer, straining to to hand the heavy, unwieldy camera on uneven and perilous footing across the river to Greg, already a couple of rocks higher up than him. The cameraman has just got the massive equipment when Rani screams from above them, Corey towering above her slender frame and pointing at something Tessa can’t see.

“The dam broke!” Rani yells, waving her arms and then Tessa can hear the rumble behind her. 

 

_The river. The water. It’s coming. That’s the rumble._

 

“Scott!” she calls, frantic, just when Scott gets back to his full feet after passing over the camera. He has been so single-mindedly focused on the task that he looks at her in puzzlement when she yanks at his elbow. By the time he understands, it’s too late to get up the steeper side of the rocky river-bed, where Greg, Rani and Corey have now found each other.

“Come on, we gotta get back to the other side,” Tessa shouts and pulls harder at him. He follows bonelessly, his face frozen in horror, and only springs back into action when the water rushing towards them comes thrashing around the riverbend. Fuck, they’re running out of time!

 

Scott scrambles, finds a vine hanging from a tree, pulls at it, and rips it from its origin. 

“Shit,” he curses and pulls Tessa by her hand to try a second. This one stays anchored to the tree it’s grown around. “Get on my back!” he orders loudly to carry over the rolling waves coming for them. Tessa blindly obeys, attaching herself to his back like a monkey just in time for him to scale the side of the river bed with her. Reaching the edge of the precipice, he dives and grabs for the vined tree like a koala, Tessa clawing at him for dear life. Just beneath them, the creek they attempted to cross just before turns into the Amazon. They made it. But only barely. 

 

After the first wave of relief has washed over them and Scott puts her safely onto the pathway, the realisation sinks in that they will never make it to the boat in time now. The others will, but Tessa and Scott have no chance of making it to the beach.

“What are we gonna do?” Rani cries from the other side, almost drained out by another bout of thunder from overhead.

“Get to the boat!” Tessa yells back vehemently. “We’ll wait out the storm and meet you at the beach in the morning!”

“No, we can’t leave you out here!” Greg argues passionately.

“We’ll be fine! Just find us tomorrow, okay?” Tessa shouts, equally as decidedly. “You gotta get outta here!”

Greg visibly battles with himself; it’s clear even from the distance and the murky rainfall between them. But then he seems to make a decision and launches the sat-phone into the air, an impressively wide throw that Scott apparently anticipated, because he stumbles a few paces backward and catches it, even if it’s so slippery from the rain that he nearly drops it right after.

“Call us once you’re safe somewhere!” Greg bellows from the other side.

“We will!” Scott yells back. “Be careful! Go!”

 

Tessa watches the others pause for another long moment, obviously torn about leaving them there but then eventually they start moving, and not a second too late, Tessa thinks, if they want to get out to sea and escape the storm in time. Scott watches them leave, his arm around her from lifting her past the tree, clutching her tightly, still.

“If we follow the river back up, we’ll get to the lake and the cave,” she tells him. “We can ride the storm out in there.”

“Yes!” Scott exclaims and drops his forehead hard against hers. “Fuck, thank God, you’re smart.”

“Come on, less flattery, more running,” she urges, wiggling out of his grasp to get him to start walking. “We need to move before this all comes down.”

 

Hiking the hill up again, especially on ground that is getting more slippery by the minute, is a task and takes way longer than slithering down had taken and Tessa falls flat on her face twice, stumbling up and getting her clothes and body completely dirty. She only keeps from falling a third time because this time, Scott catches her in time. 

“Don’t you dare laugh,” she glares at his grin when she lets go of her and he pulls a face.

“I wasn’t,” he says, pressing on. “You look like you just ran a _Tough Mudder_ is all.”

 

“Bite me,” she growls and surpasses him. She’s about to say some other snippy thing when they happen on the bit of hill just before the plateau with the lake that sports a brand new waterfall, now that the dam above has broken. Climbing up a few more rocks, they find that the lake is now just at half its volume but twice its beauty from before, returned to its natural state. Even in the foul weather, it’s easy to see. The way it sits there, you could swim in it without the fear of getting swept away into the river, as the current feeding into the new waterfall is now nice and light. Tessa is tempted to linger but doesn’t as the timing of the thunder is getting uncomfortably close to the shuddering light in the sky.

 

“Cave,” she points out to Scott and he follows her words, running up ahead to the mouth of it, and waits for her to get in before going himself. It’s pitch dark inside but the sporadic flares of lighting illuminate it well enough to see that the small opening winds into a larger space. There is sandy ground below an arched, rocky structure that soon lights up in a garish yellow as Scott produces emergency glow sticks and a torch light from his otherwise ridiculously over-packed survival-backpack and puts them all on the ground.

“I’ll see if I can build a fire from this,” he says, pointing out a bunch of old twigs scattered on the cave floor. “Once we can see something, we can put up the tent, get a little heat isolation.” They better, it’s damp and cold in the cave. Tessa already feels shivery.

 

Eventually, their shadows dance up and down the wall as Tessa wipes her face with her shirt, having stripped out of it to get into the change of clothes she had packed for the next day, and places the dirty one gingerly in the back pocket of her rucksack while Scott starts messing with the tent. They’d done alright erecting it when they were being measured for time during their survival training, but that was when they had 100% visibility and weren’t shaking every time thunder and lighting roared, now completely overhead, right in the middle of the storm. The rain outside sounds like artillery fire, even from the shelter of the mountain. The truce they’ve tacitly struck up by necessity in order to get to this safety lasts right up until Tessa asks Scott to hammer the pegs in and he refuses.

 

“Why won’t you just put them in the ground?!” she asks him in the flickering light of the fire (he’d made that with a lighter this time, not a stupid flint stone, thank you very much).

“What do we need to ruin them for?” he asks her, looking at her like she’s a simpleton. "There’s no wind in here and the tent is standing just fine on its own. The ground will be too hard to drive them in, I’m telling you."

“Scott, it’s four tiny little…,” she huffs in frustration. “You know what, just give me the hammer, I’ll do it myself.”

“Fine, be my guest,” he shrugs, instantly on edge, and kicks the hammer from his backpack her way. “You see how far you’ll get.” And then he mumbles something under his breath about her not trusting him that rubs her the wrong way, which in turn makes her snippy.

“I will,” she barks. “It’s not like you’re gonna be sleeping in there anyway.” And yeah, that’s childish but so is he. He does a peeved double-take in her direction and the air between them is about as charged as that of the thunderstorm raging above their heads.

 

“Excuse me, what?” he asks, way more prissy than he has any right to be.

“Oh, so you mean you can share an enclosed space with me now?” she challenges. “Like, I’m not _too gross_ to sleep next to tonight?”

“Tess, don’t,” Scott mutters, shutting down instantly. She scoffs, her frustration sky-rocketing instantly.

“I’m so tired of ‘Tess, don’t.’ _Tess, don’t_ , what?!” she exclaims, throwing her hands up and she explodes, casting the hammer down onto the ground from where she’s just picked it up. It thuds hard, the sound echoing in the cave. Her voice is still louder. 

 

“I don’t even get to say how hurtful it is, what you’re doing?” she continues, growing more livid with every word. “Might I remind you that _you_ wanted to touch _me_? I’m sorry I got off beside you in bed, that was crossing the line, okay? I get it. It was wrong.” Fuming, she walks up to where he cowers, still fastening a strap of the tent cover to the wiring below. “But you begged me not to stop, okay? That was you. _You_ got your fingers knuckles-deep inside me, alright?” 

He flinches, probably because of her out-of-character use of that very explicit language, and struggles to get to his feet, tumbling backward in a useless attempt escape her wrath. She doesn’t care. He’s not getting away from her this time. She’s so beyond done with all of this.

 

“I didn’t make you do that. You wanted that,” she barrels on, chasing him away from the light of the fire, moving in on him like a deadly animal, all her rage making its way outside in the dim light of the place. “And then to turn around and act like I’m some creep trying to molest you in bed every night, that’s just…that’s just so unfair.”

“Wait, is that what you think?” he stops her short, which is to say he stops backing away from her, which results in her nearly running into him, only stopping when both his hands land around her elbows, holding her there. “Is that why you think I’m not sleeping in our bed anymore?”

 

She shrugs at him, her face split in a frown. Of course she does! Why else would he not want to share her bed?! Scott grips her tight, squeezing once before dropping her arms again. “That’s not…that’s not why.”

 

“Why then? Enlighten me,” she snaps, her patience and grace finally at a hard end. “Or I don’t see why I should let you into this tent tonight.”

“I don’t appreciate you blackmailing me,” he says, his face stoney, from what she can make out from it.

She can match that sentiment easily. “I don’t appreciate being treated like a sad loser who is pining for you and can’t keep their hands to themselves,” she says bitterly.

“God, Tess,” he groans and walks around her, to get closer to the fire. This way, when she spins on her heel to face him, she can see the exact moment his features move into a grimace of humiliation as he goes on, face open like hell where it was unreadable before. "If anyone of us is a sad, pining loser who can’t keep their hands to themselves, it sure as fuck isn’t you.”

She doesn’t understand, and her expression shows it. 

“Honestly, woman,” he scoffs at her, literally _scoffs._ (The nerve on that man!) “You can’t be this smart and this dense at the same time.”

“Excuse you?” she yelps, shrill and ready to throw down and get in his face again.

 

“I don’t sleep in our bed because _I_ can’t do it anymore without…wanting to touch you again,” he huffs in palpable distress. “It’s bad enough being in the same room at night, honestly. I don’t think you’re gross. It’s…the absolute opposite. I’m trying so bad to stay away from you, you have no idea how hard that is for me.”

Well that’s…that’s…if that’s true and she’s been wrong about him thinking it’s disgusting they could maybe do stuff together that whole time…then that’s wonderful. And also _fucking_ infuriating. Because what is his deal then? If they both want the same thing?

 

“I don’t understand,” she mutters, wanting to sound furious but it doesn’t quite carry past her desert-dry mouth. “I…goddammit, you know I want it. If that wasn’t clear, I don’t know how else to show you.” She takes a deep breath. After all, she can’t embarrass herself in front of him more than she already has. Can’t bare herself any more if she tried. “I want you. There, I said it.” 

Scott winces, with his whole body. “Tess. Please.”

“Please, _what_?” What is his problem? It doesn’t make sense. "What’s the point? If I want it and you say you want it, what are we waiting for then, huh?”

“We can’t,” he insists and that’s a broken record she never needs to hear again. If he gives her that trite spiel of ‘risking the friendship’ one more time, she might actually choke him to death.

“Why?” she demands. “’Cause of the show? I won’t freaking tell anybody.”

“No, not because of the show. I don’t give a shit about the stupid show,” Scott nearly yells back, ruffing his hands through this hair. "I won’t go to Erica and tell her what’s going on here either, I’m not an idiot.”

 

“Well, then why?” she doesn’t let off.

“Because of _us_ , T. I told you,” he says and she prays he doesn’t finish that sentence. “We’re not…its not smart. Our friendship—”

And that’s it. “I can’t listen to this,” she shakes her head, tired, feeling a hundred years older than when she entered this damn cave. She needs to leave. 

 

The storm is raging so badly outside, she’s nearly swept from her feet by the wind as soon as she steps outside of the cave. Wet to the bones in seconds, the wind hits her almost violently, but she doesn’t care. She can’t stay in that stuffy cavern one minute longer with him _lying_ to her like that.

“Tessa!” she hears him call behind her, storming out after, catching up with her and grabbing her by the arm harshly. “What are you doing? Come back inside!”

She whips around, soaked stray strands of hair hitting her in the face. “That’s such bullshit, you know that?” she pokes him in the shoulder harshly. “It’s not about our friendship. That’s a crap excuse. Why can’t you just say what you mean?”

 

She stabs her index finger into his shoulder again, even harder. “Just tell me you don’t wanna be with me. It’s fine, I get it. We don’t have to be together if you’re so appalled by the idea. We can just…screw and get it out of our systems and that’s that. You don’t have to pretend it’s because you don’t want to mess us up or some shit. So, you’re not in love with me, it’s fine, I’ll live.” She punctuates the next thing with an onslaught of pokes, one nearly every syllable. “But don’t you dare say it’s because you don’t want to _ruin the friendship_.”

“Jesus, Tess, _ow_ ,” he complains and finally catches her wrist, holding it tight and close to his body.

“No, I mean it,” she tries to shake him off, her voice unsteady with unbidden weakness she must not allow. “I deserve at least that. At least tell me the truth.” 

“You want the truth?” Scott growls and yanks her closer by her arm, thunder smashing and echoing from the foot of the mountain they’re standing on, lightning striking somewhere beneath them near the beach. 

“Yeah,” Tessa grits out. “For once that would be nice.”

 

“I was _there._ Okay?” he bursts out and that finally stops her short. “That night after I broke up with Jess. That bullshit story about how we got together…I went home and I didn’t stop at my floor, I went straight up to yours. And I stood in front of your door and I wanted to…to tell you everything. But I couldn’t.” 

“Tell me what?” she asks, it’s about the only thing in her mind that moment. Other than _Huh?!_

“Tessa,” he tries backing out again.

“Tell me now,” she orders, hoping it’ll sound resolved and tough, not as paper-thin as she feels right now. “You owe me that. I swear to God, Scott, I’ll—”

 

“I love you,” he shouts, right in her face. And then goes on a tangent. One that Tessa can’t help but drown in. “What else could it fucking be, Tess? I’m _in love_ with you. I’ve been in love with you since I was seventeen. And I know it can’t happen and it’s… You know, that night I thought _fuck it_ , right? I drove home and in my head, I just thought: ‘It’s Tessa.’ It was only ever you. Jess and everyone else in between was just…filler. I tried to be with other people so I wouldn’t have to deal with what I felt —what I _feel—_ for you. And this whole thing, this place and this show, the pretending…it’s killing me. I want you so bad, I’m hardly breathing most of the time. I can’t just screw you and that’s that. I don’t even know if I can ever move on from just kissing you, as pathetic as that is. If we slept together, I couldn’t go back. I can’t come back from that, so we can’t just do it and ‘get it out of our system.’ _That’s_ the truth.”

 

He is saying words, she realises that. They’re beautiful words, words she has longed to hear for years and years, she realises that, too. But she can’t process any of it at the moment because his logic above all that is so flawed she wants to scream.

“That doesn’t make any sense,” she wails, flapping her arms and finally getting her wrist free from his grip. She is so drenched in rain, and the storm is raging right on top of them. Tessa doesn’t move. _She’s_ the force to be reckoned with, now. “Makes no sense whatsoever. I’ve been in love with _you_ since I was _seven_. And you damn well know that. And if you’re in love with me and I’m in love with you, what are we doing here?”

 

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” he moves closer, beseeching her. “It’s a bad idea.” 

“Being together?” she asks.

“Being together,” he says, drowned out by thunder so loud it makes them both flinch.

“Why?” she goes on anyway, standing her ground.

“Because,” he says. “Because relationships break and then I’d lose you and I won’t survive that.”

 

“Scott, no. We wouldn’t—”

“You don’t know that,” he insists. “You _don’t_ know that, T. But I do. I know. You won’t…you think you love me now because you had a crush on me when we were kids. But I’m not a great guy. I’m exhausting and moody and I get fucking dark sometimes; you wouldn’t…you won’t love me like this forever. You’re gonna fall out of love with me and I can’t take that. I won’t _live_ through that. To have you and then lose you, I can’t do it.”

“Who says I’ll fall out of love?” she asks him, because, honestly, does he know her at all? “Who says _you_ won’t?”

“That’s not possible,” he says this with a certainty he won’t accept when it comes from her.

“Fucking hell, Scott. You think it’s possible for me?” She swats him in the shoulder again, helpless in the face of his stubbornness. “I’ve been here since I was seven. _Seven!_ I barely remember a time when I wasn’t…crazy about you. That’s almost my whole life. This is ridiculous.” 

 

“It’s not ridiculous,” he maintains. “You put me on a pedestal and you think you love that but that’s not real. I’m not half the man you think I am.” 

“Do you even listen to yourself?” She wants to shake him. Instead she take that last step to close the distance between them and puts both palms on his cheeks, trying to maybe get through to him from her hands to his brain. “I’m not a stupid kid. I know how I feel about you. I know who you are. I’ve been here for the worst and the best you’ve ever been. I grew up with you, I watched you, every step of the way. You have a shit outlook on yourself. And frankly, it’s patronising and disgusting how you think you can decide for me what is real or not. I’m fully capable of discerning reality from fantasy.”

“Patronising and disgusting,” he parrots, like she’s just made his point for him. “There you go.”

“Don’t twist my words,” she says vehemently. “I love you. Just the way you are. In every way. I always have.”

 

Scott shakes his head with just as much vigour, stubborn as a child. “No. I’ll lose you. I can’t lose you.”

“Baby,” the endearment softly tumbles from her lips by itself. “There are no guarantees. Never in life. We might get hit by lightning if we stay out here for much longer. One of us might get sick in a year or in five or in ten. Maybe we have the biggest fight ever and can’t stand each other from there on out. But that might happen to us as friends, too. Nothing is certain. But I’ve loved you since you were a kid and I still do. And if through whatever, life takes us apart, then that’s that. But I don’t want to stand at the Pearly Gates one day knowing we never tried.” 

 

Tenderly and carefully, as if he might run into the jungle if she goes in too hard now, she kisses him on the side of the mouth. Just once. His arms close around her shoulders. He’s trembling around her, closing his eyes.

“I’m so scared,” he says, his voice spluttering like the rain. 

“I’m scared, too,” she admits. She’s so scared it twists her insides into a tight little ball, but she is also exalted and jittery with happiness as well. “But it’s us. We made it this far. _Seventeen_ years…I still wake up every morning most excited to see you. That’s not nothing. I think our odds are pretty good, don’t you?” She kisses him again, encouraged merely by his lack of struggling against it. 

 

Finally, he kisses her back, his hands landing on her face, one digging into her hair and the other closing loosely around her neck, thumb stroking her skin lightly, lingering on her throat. Yes, he’s kissed her about a million times now since they have set out on this adventure, but this is different. This isn’t for the camera, or for anyone else who might see. This is for them. Only for them. And he wants it. He wants _her._ He’s wanted her all along. The thought makes her lightheaded. She moves her hands to the back of his head to pull him in, which is the moment everything goes white and bright, even through her closed eyes. Not from the kiss, although it might have been. He breaks apart from her mouth, gripping her tight and they stare at each other as a deafening roar of thunder splits their moment in half. That was the closest bolt hitting yet.

“Let’s get the fuck outta here, babe,” he mumbles against her lips, and she doesn’t argue. 

 

They don’t get further than the cave entrance before he’s run her against the wall, careful to still hold her head so that when she hits, it’s the back of his hand crashing against the stone. He kisses her on the same breath she releases on impact, and it’s not rough like she thought it would be, but languid and soft, so very soft, it might break her. She moans before she can help herself, making him grin against her mouth. It’s hard to contend within herself, everything she’s feeling right now: truth and joy and relief and love and passion. And surprise, more than anything. She never expected this. She’d thought he was grossed out by being turned on by her, because he maybe thought of her like a sister. She had no idea that he had feelings for her, feelings so strong that he kept himself away so he didn’t have a chance to blow it with her romantically. If she had known…she could have saved them so much time. She would have done something about it ages ago. If she’d known how he felt. It’s a good thing she knows now. Finally. Only took them a decade and a bit.

 

“I’m glad we had this talk,” she says against his smile as it settles. “I can’t believe it.”

“No take backs, Virtue,” Scott mumbles and pecks her lips between the words. “You’re stuck with me now.”

“I’ll be gentle,” she whispers back and he makes a rumbling sound, somewhere in the back of his throat before he pushes his hips forward, wedging himself between her legs. Someday, she will work through what is happening right now, all intellectual and analytical. But tonight she won’t. Tonight she’ll feel. Dissolve into his bloodstream and show him as best as she can that he’s never going to lose her.

“Do I get to sleep in the tent with you?” Scott mutters, minutes later, after his light stubble has made her lips sufficiently puffy.

“You get to come into it with me,” Tessa relents. “I’m not promising you any sleep.”

“That’s alright,” he chuckles, all throaty and hungry. She puts her hands on his chest and pushes him further into the cave. 

 

Inside, the fire he built is still burning brightly and she’s glad for it, because that means she can actually see his face. He looks at her like she’s magic and there’s no camera lens anywhere. So maybe the way he looked at her those weeks before wasn’t really just for the show. It would make her feel warm and fuzzy all over if she wasn’t drenched to her bones in her wet clothes and starting to freeze. Scott sees the change in her immediately.

 

He tucks some loose wet hair behind her ear and smiles. “Let’s get you out of those clothes, huh? Just give me a second to put down the mats and sleeping bags, alright? I’ll be quick.”

Tessa stands and watches as he fumbles with their backpacks in the murkiness, producing the thin self-inflating mats he shoves into the tent’s mouth to sort themselves out in there, and then unpacks their sleeping bags one by one and disappears into the tent for a while, presumably to arrange it all. Meanwhile Tessa steps out of her sopping wet shoes, placing them next to Scott’s recently removed pair, and shimmies out of her equally as wet khaki shorts. 

 

When Scott reemerges, he doesn’t take his eyes off of her, even as he stumbles to his  feet. His eyes are dark in the flickering fire light. They stand there for a moment, facing each other and there’s this bristle of promise that makes Tessa’s lips pulse with the memory of his mouth on hers and the anticipation of getting them there again. He closes the distance between them swiftly and fingers with the hem of her shirt. She can’t breathe, he’s so close. She wants him more than she's ever wanted anything.

 

“I’m gonna take this off,” he tells her matter-of-factly and then does it, carefully rolling the sticky garment up her body, making her shiver but not from the sudden exposure. The shirt catches on her head and he struggles a bit, groaning, which in turn makes her giggle and his job even harder. But he’s grinning at her when she’s finally free, her top knot at long last completely undone and her hair falling open and tangled-wet over her shoulders. Dazed-looking, he tucks her hair back behind her ears.

 

“Do I get to help you, too?” she asks him, standing there in a dark cave by softly glowing embers in her mismatched underwear. He nods and so she doesn’t wait to undo his pants, giving them a good push downwards and then taking his shirt off. It all goes onto the pile of her own clothes. She should lay them out to dry but she really doesn’t give a shit about anything but him right now. He’s there and he’s just in his boxer briefs and he’s so hard under them, her throat dries up. She can’t help but stare a bit, which makes him shift on his feet uneasily when he notices.

 

“Tent?” she suggests, trying to put him at ease as much as move things along. She wants him out of that restricting fabric. Scott responds by taking her hand and pulling her after him. The climb into the polycotton hut is not very sexy but they manage. He goes down first, lying on his side and holding out his hand again to help her down. She’s not on her back two seconds before he kisses her once more and quickly unhooks her bra at the back to get her out of it. He revels at the sight for just a brief moment before sucking one nipple into his mouth, making her arch her back into the touch. He’s not wasting time. She still can’t believe this is really happening. Studiously, he continues with his ministrations, maneuvering her around where he wants her with strength and ease, continuing his trail down her body and gripping her by the hips to lift them and slide her panties off. She is left breathless when he pushes her knees apart and finally gets _there._

 

She moans at the first contact, the arousal that was almost subdued by wonder before, back with a vengeance and he chuckles against her skin, putting his palm on her lower abdomen and looking up at her from between her thighs. 

“Tell me if you like it?” he asks her, sounding endearingly hopeful and she can only nod and hope to catch her breath. 

 

There’s honestly not much she can say once he gets started, not more than ‘Yes, God, _fuck_ , Scott, yes!,’ which she tells him in random intervals as he plays her like an instrument. She thinks she comes within minutes, she’s not quite sure, it’s all a bit much but he holds her down as she squirms, his tongue dancing from one right spot to the next and back to _that, right there, yes_ , again and again and again. He growls into her flesh and when she has just about forgotten her name, he comes back up, rising to kiss her with her taste on his tongue, and pushes his hips against hers slowly. He’s still in his briefs but he doesn’t seem to care. He moans and sighs and groans as if he’s already inside her. Tessa is about to crawl out of her own skin with desire, losing the boundaries of her body to his. She loves him, loves, loves, _loves_ this man.

 

He keeps grinding into her, gently and leisurely, making her stir-crazy with wanting the real thing but he doesn’t seem to be in a hurry. It makes her all dizzy, the way he moves on to kiss her neck, covering her with his lips and tongue, like he’s drinking her and she’s the best thing he’s ever tasted.

“I want you so damn much,” he whispers hotly, so quiet it barely carries. “Want to bury my cock so deep inside you.” 

 

Apparently he likes to keep up a running, dirty commentary of what he’d like to do do her. She can’t say she’s opposed to any of it. Except when after a while, and more of those filthy, enticing words, he suddenly pauses and then stops moving entirely, because she is very opposed to _that_. She opens her eyes to find him hovering over her, pupils blown out and neck flushed red, visible even in the yellow-tinted gloom.

“Shit,” he breathes, chest heaving, and caresses her cheek absentmindedly, as if looking for purchase there. 

“What?” she asks, trying to focus on what the matter is now.

“I have nothing,” he tells her, looking grief-stricken. “No protection.”

 

 _Thank God._ “In my backpack, first compartment,” she tells him quick, matter-of-factly, instantly relieved that it’s just this and not second thoughts on his part. (Because if he doesn’t do to her what he’s just whispered about for five minutes straight, she will very likely burst into a million throbbing pieces.) 

Scott looks at her quizzically for a moment but then snaps forward to crawl to the tent’s entrance and fish around in front of it for her backpack and when he ducks back inside, he has two boxes of condoms in his hands, one regular, one XL. He holds them up for her, raising an eyebrow.

“I wasn’t sure what size…,” she tells him, a little embarrassed.

“That’s...very flattering, I guess,” he mutters, looks at both the boxes and then puts one to the side. “Regular ones are fine, though.” And she loves that he has zero qualms admitting that and she loves that he’s regular honestly. Too big is no fun (and sucks to deep-throat, which she is very much planning on doing as this night progresses). Look at what a confident, secure and fine human male she’s picked to lose her heart to forever. Good on her. (And her private parts.)

 

“Why did you bring those?” Scott asks her, rattling her out of her daydreaming about going down on him.

“I don’t know, I thought you might get your shit together,” she tells him honestly.

“Did you...I mean...did you bring them from home?” he asks again, getting closer to her on his knees. “From Canada?”

“No,” she smiles, understanding the question. Did she go into this planning to sleep with him? The answer is certainly not. “I got them in the city, after we bought the dress.”

“Right. Wow.” He runs his hand through his hair before slotting back in beside her, rolling to his side so he can run his palm over her waist. “So you did kinda plan this.”

“Well, not this specific scenario,” she replies, nodding at the dark green tent surrounding them. “But I thought we were maybe gonna end up wanting to do this, so I thought best be prepared.”

“But you were trying to seduce me, right?” he asks and it’s a bit hard to follow with the way he trails his hand across her chest, brushing her nipples so they harden under his fingertips. “With the underwear to bed and everything.”

“Hmm, maybe,” she drawls, her eyes rolling back just a little. “No success with that.”

“My dick would beg to differ,” Scott half-laughs, raspy and low. “I’ve been dying for weeks.”

“You don’t have to anymore,” she mutters and tugs at his shoulder, trying to tip him down onto her. “You can have everything you want from me.”

 

He follows the momentum she creates and covers her with his body, still clutching the condoms in one hand.  He only lets go for a moment to take his underwear off and then fiddles with the carton, manages to get it open and spill all its contents on the spread out sleeping bags. She can’t blame him, her pulse is racing so heavily, she wonders if she might be having a heart attack. She’s hot all over, eyes unfocused and darting from what he is doing to how much she is shaking, and he is fumbling, electricity running through his body, he’s so on edge.

“Fuck,” he whispers, stressed and frantic. Responding naturally, Tessa runs her fingers across his temple to soothe him, trying to calm them both down. His head snaps around to her and for a second it’s like they’re kids again, taking each others hands on the ice. Just a headstrong little boy all proud of himself that he can show the girl from the city how to skate. And a little girl who has never held a boy’s hand before, but finds that she likes it if it’s his. They’re kids still, the two of them, about to do a new thing together, when everything else between them has already been charted and experienced long ago. This is new. And scary. And exciting. There’s no other first time Tessa ever wants to have again. Just this. Or better, there is nobody else she ever wants any other firsts with but him. Other firsts, she can’t even _imagine_ with anybody else...moving into her first shared apartment, celebrating her first wedding anniversary, having her first child. It all revolves around him.

 

“Leave them out. We’ll need them in time,” she says and that gets Scott right back to growling. She helps him focus, the way she always manages to when he’s spiraling about something. His hands still shake when he’s working one of the condoms onto his length but Tessa barely notices, occupied with controlling her breathing and getting into the moment. (It’s their way, really. He freaks out, she calms him down and then she gets herself in check...but she doesn’t mind, not tonight.) It’s happening now, it’s gonna happen. She’s finally going to have sex with him. After years and years hoping and praying, she’ll know what it’s like. How it feels to sleep with the love of her life.

 

It’s _fucking_ wonderful. Epic. Mind-blowing. Intimate. Sweet. Tender. Loving.

 

It’s _everything._ From how he gently aligns them, to that sweet favourite moment he helps her savour, when for the very first time he sinks into her and stares into her eyes for every centimeter, to the first moves he makes in her. He holds her gaze the entire way, won’t let her look away or close her eyes, and then starts on his commentary once again. She realises in a flash that she already knows this from him. He’s like this when they dance. If it’s on the floor or on the ice, he’s constantly talking, whispering through his teeth about cues and turns. Now he’s whispering about wanting her and needing her. It’s so _him_ , she could cry.

 

And this is everything, too. The “I love you,” he whispers, pushing into her, _just so_ , just perfect. “I love you so much, T. You have no idea.”

“I love you,” she breathes, kissing his cheek as he’s mouthing at her neck, talking and talking.

“You’re mine now,” he nearly whimpers, moaning between the words. “God, you’re mine, only mine. Say you’re mine. Hmm? Say it, baby? Please? Who do you belong to?”

“You,” she yelps as he thrusts even further, pulling out far to go back in deeper on every new stroke.

“Who do you belong to?” he repeats, desperately, and all she feels is his body and all she smells is his scent, salt and soap, his hair flat against his face pressed close next to hers. All she sees is the walls of the tent and the muscles of his shoulders dancing under his skin where he holds her. And fucks her. And fucks her and holds her. He draws in a sharp breath when she hikes her legs up, so the angle changes and his nose bumps harder into her neck.

“I belong to you,” she whispers.

“Forever,” he groans. And sniffles, just a little, just below her ear, like he might be crying.

“Forever,” she echoes. And then she nudges him, once, twice, until he gets the message and rolls onto his back, holding her by the hips to keep them connected.

 

She claims him like he’s claimed her. “You belong to me too,” she tells him, locking eyes as his hands pinch hard into her hips. “You’re all mine, right?” 

He nods, earnest through the effort of keeping it together underneath her as she starts riding him indulgently. “I was always yours. Since we were kids,” he promises and his eyes are lighter now, still hungry, but clearer, flickering hazel in the dim light, looking like amber, like honey. “I never really loved anybody else.”

“Good,” she smiles and hopes it’s a little bit wicked, that it says ‘and you will never really love anybody else after me.’

From the way he gazes up at her, all glistening, soft looks and open affection, she thinks he understands. She thinks he knows.

 

(And _she_ knows it's the same for her. There'll be no next one for her, no one like him, ever.)

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So....worth the wait, maybe?
> 
> (You know the drill...Scott has feelings too, feel free to ask what they are...but he's been pretty open this chapter, has he not?)


	8. You Do It For Me

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am sorry, I couldn't update this quicker! I am also owing you all some interaction in the comments, I have not forgotten you or grown unappreciative, I promise! I am so grateful for every last comment, you have no idea!
> 
> But for last week has been a LOT and then I didn't get as much writing done as I wanted but here we are now. Major thanks as always go out to my three angels KIM, KEL and FAIRWINDS09, who save my life every chapter anew and are at my beck and call through time zones and work and I love them so much for it, they have no idea.
> 
> Disclaimer I: This is a chapter that functions both as a transition and an ending...more of that in the next author's note. It's not as eventful as the last couple of chapters but I hope you like it a little bit anyway.
> 
> Disclaimer II: Please mind that everyone here is an AU version of themselves that doesn't necessarily reflect what I think about the real life versions! Some characters, like WeaPo function in the fic as certain archetypes that I need, that are likely very OOC from the real world. This is not meant to diss anybody.
> 
> Disclaimer III: ...nah, I'm just kidding, there are no more disclaimers. Let's get this show on the road.

****Tessa wakes up to sparse light and used air. It smells like sex and latex and sleep but she doesn’t care one bit. She’s half covered by her sleeping bag which they unzipped to be a blanket. She hadn’t bothered putting her bra back on after the last time he took it off, so now she’s all exposed but finds that she doesn’t mind it at all. Tired, but fuzzily warm, she blinks, finding Scott asleep beside her, the half of the sleeping bag that isn’t on her, tucked between his legs covering his modesty. The rest of him is bare, curled up on his side facing her, dead to the world. God, he looks so pretty, the way his chest rises and falls, how his forehead creases as he dreams. She wonders what he’s dreaming about. If maybe it has something to do with how comfortably sore she is, how her thighs are a little cramped from how he’d kept them split the night before.

 

They did it. They went all the way together and it was glorious, it was everything she ever thought it would be, and so much better at the same time. How he whispered to her, how he didn’t get tired at all, how they went through four condoms and he was wonderfully relentless, absolutely never getting sick of going down on her and so enticingly responsive and vocal when she returned the favour, when he mumbled under his breath that she was the best ever as she had his balls cupped in her palm. How his hands tangled into her hair and his tongue charted every inch of her neck. How he looked down at her, buried inside her body, and told her he loved her over and over again. That memory propels her forward more than anything, and she scoots over, selfishly waking him up. He doesn’t seem like he knows who and where he is at first, he just tilts his head at her, bleary eyed, and smiles.

 

“Tutu,” he mutters, and yawns, her very old, very long retired nickname sounding like molasses falling from his lips. She giggles.

“You haven’t called me that in years,” she mumbles and scoots into his outstretched arms, letting him pull her on top of his chest.

“I need it,” he rasps, smoothing the bare skin of her back out with his palm. “For comfort. I’m trying really hard not to freak out right now.”

He’s very honest and raw in the mornings after making love, that’s a new thing she learns right then. She thinks it’s adorable.

“Why would you freak out?” she asks, taking a deep breath against his skin, inhaling his scent, to commit it as it is to memory. It’s that sandalwood note of his shower-gel that still lingers, even past the rain and the sweat, mixed with the notes of exertion from sex, and that very specific way his dark hair smells, sweet and musky and perfect. She thinks she’d be able to pick him out of a crowd by smell alone. 

 

“I haven’t just stopped being terrified of losing you overnight,” he tells her, his voice bare with sincerity.

“You’re not gonna lose me,” she promises him. “No matter what happens, I’ll always love you.”

“You’re gonna have to promise me that a couple more times,” he mutters and kisses her head. 

“I promise,” she says, and doesn’t doubt her words for a second. 

“I’ll be annoying, you know that?” he warns her gently.

“I know,” she chuckles. “You’ve always been a little annoying.”

“You’ve always been perfect,” he sighs and it’s not a joke.

“Far from it,” she says and kisses his chest lightly. “But I always tried really hard for you.”

 

Next thing she knows, she’s in his arms as he pulls her up to hug her closer and she could swear there is a choked noise escaping from his throat as he does it.

“Baby, are you crying?” she asks him, squished between his collarbone and neck.

“No,” he sobs defensively. “I’m just—”

“Crying,” she cuts in and lifts her head to look at his red-rimmed eyes. He looks like his Mom when he’s welling with tears. Alma is definitely the one who passed down the emotionality there. “Why are you crying?”

“That thing you said,” he replies, casting his eyes at the ceiling. “You always made such an effort for me and most of the time, I was a dick to you.”

“It’s okay,” she smiles and gives him a kiss on the jaw. “It’s very cute that you’re so emotional.”

“I’m serious, though, it’s _not_ okay,” he says, his tears subsiding. “I wanna do better. I want to be perfect for you.”

 

“You are,” she reasures him easily.

“I’ll treat you so well,” he promises. “I swear.”

“Well, you gotta treat me normally, mostly,” she says, and he shrugs and makes a face like it doesn’t compute. “Because of the show,” she explains. “We can’t run around being all different now.”

He stills underneath her and something shifts. His guard being down results in her seeing his vulnerability on full display. She moves quickly, touching her hand to his cheek.

“Or what were you thinking?” she asks. “Do you not wanna finish the show?”

“No, I mean,” he starts, his face shifting from troubled to pondering. “Technically we’re not a couple, right?”

“Well,” she crinkles her forehead. He reacts immediately.

“Wait, that came out wrong,” he hurries. “I don’t mean that I don’t want to be together.” He kisses her quickly. “If you want to, I definitely want to.”

“I do,” she says, the warm fuzziness kicking up a notch. “I want to be with you.”

“For realsies,” he smirks, kisses her again and she giggles. 

“For realsies,” she parrots. He’s such an adorable dork, it cracks her chest open with affection.

She sits up on him, smirks, and just like that, the sleeping bag between them gets pushed aside and they use condom number five. By the time they’re ready to leave the safe cocoon of their tent in a cave, both in their underwear and her in one of the shirts he brought, the box of twelve Trojans is now down to six. 

 

“I’m gonna use that sat-phone now,” Scott calls to her, stepping out into the light before her. The rocks near the cave’s mouth are already hot under their feet with the morning sun. It’s all pretty again after the storm, the water passing softly through the lake, the jungle alive with chirping sounds and ruffles of feathers and wings and thumps of small animal feet.

“Oh, right,” she says, watching him move toward the lake where no trees are covering the view to the clear blue sky. “We totally forgot about that last night.”

“Can’t really blame us,” he winks at her from over his shoulder and they laugh. But the fact that their crew is going to be picking them up soon raises a question.

“What are we gonna tell them?” she asks, realising that earlier in the tent, they’d gotten busy before they reached a decision on the matter. “Are we going to...you know, quit the show?”

“Do you want to quit?” he asks back, throwing the ball right into her court. Tessa understands that they’re dancing around a moral question here that neither of them wants to be the first to weigh in on. _Are we going to lie about the nature of our relationship to have a shot at a million dollars or are we going to be honest and pass up on it?_ (But then, hadn’t they entered this competition precisely to win a million dollars through lying about the nature of their relationship? Her head hurts.)

 

“Can we say what we want on the count of three?” she suggests, not in the mood for hours of beating around the bush on this decision. He nods, sort of wobbly but when she counts them in they say at the same time: “I wanna win.” They laugh, because they’ve always been so very in sync and Tessa is very relieved to be on the same page this time as well. 

They leave it at that, they don’t discuss the morality of it, a shared look is enough to know that they’re both aware lying is bad but a million dollars is a million dollars and they’re so close to winning the show, it would be stupid to throw the competition at this point. All she says on the matter after is of a practical nature. “So we lie. And we’ll lie well. And then we’ll win.”

Scott nods again and then holds up the phone, shrugs, and sets out to call Erica with a new secret to keep from a new set of people. Tessa ducks back into the cave, because getting picked up at the beach in their underwear and her in Scott’s T-shirt is really not an option and their clothes are still in a damp pile next to the burnt out fire inside.

 

By the time she gets back with their clothes and places them each on their own spot on the hot rocks to dry, he is done with the call.

“We’re supposed to be at the beach in three hours,” he tells her. “They were really worried about us. I told them we had no reception because of the storm.”

“On our satellite phone?” she raises an eyebrow, rising from a bend down to tuck at the edges of his shirt from the day before. He shrugs.

“So that rag you’re wearing, that should be laid out to dry as well,” Scott muses, pointing at his not-white-anymore tee, falling around her frame more like a dress.

“But it’s not wet,” she informs him, which he rectifies too quickly for her to stop by ducking towards the lake and splashing two handfuls of water at her. He barely gets the shirt wet but neither of them cares.

 

“I think you should let that dry while we clean off in the lake,” he tells her and she finally gets it. Chuckling, she holds her hand up to him, to make him pause, and goes into the cave to bring back another condom. He makes a face at her when she puts it on the ground near the water’s edge.

“Come on, like you’re not gonna try something,” she laughs and he gives her this ‘fair enough’ kind of shake of the head and moves in. If his eyes could undress her, she would already be naked. And God, does she love being marooned on this lonely island with him. Because when she fiddles with the waistband of his underwear, nobody else can see him undress, just her. It’s all just hers.

“Can you step back a little,” she asks, short of breath as she realises something. “I haven’t really...seen you. In the light.”

 

“I haven’t seen you either,” he swallows and looks for the first time this morning like he hasn’t eaten in over seventeen hours. They nod at each other and as she strips out of his shirt and her panties, he steps out of his boxer briefs. She stares at him shamelessly once they’re both naked, facing each other in the jungle like some sort of Canadian Adam and Eve. Except there’s no maple leafs covering anything. And thank God for that. He is glorious. Perfect. His defined abs are making this V-shape she’s already crazy about, pointing down to where he’s rising, straight and thick. He follows her eyes, and hers flicker up to his face in time to see him blush.

 

“You’re so beautiful,” she whispers and he nearly giggles in his sudden shyness. 

He scratches the back of his head, creating a stretch that tugs at his whole body deliciously, making everything taut from his belly button to his shoulders. 

“I’ve never done this before, letting someone look at me like this,” he mumbles.

“Me neither,” she says and it’s the first time he seems to remember that she is butt naked, too. Instantly all of his bashfulness makes way for longing. It’s all over his face when his head flies up to survey her, tracing her curves at leisure, as if he could touch her with his gaze.

 

She swallows hard and resists the urge to cover herself up, letting him look. But Scott has never been good at only watching things he likes and not touching them. Which is why he doesn’t stay where he is long and instead, ever impatient, he walks over to her and puts his hands on her hips. It was always more about instant gratification about his cravings for him. (Unless it was about her, apparently. But that is over now, too.)

“Ever gone skinny dipping on a deserted island before?” he whispers, his eyes now trained on hers, forgoing ogling her body to stare into her soul, solidifying this new colour within the palette of their relationship, this whole new tapestry reaching from desire to passion to abandon. She shakes her head to his question and he grins, moving to take her into the water by the hand. There’s some sort of song playing in the back of her head, something soft, something about love.

 

They’re both jumpy going in the water, because it’s colder than expected but eventually the shrieks of panic at the temperature turn to laughter as their bodies grow accustomed to it, and they find each other, swimming towards the middle where the algae on the bottom of the lake won’t touch their feet. He’s with her in moments, head and shoulders sticking out from the surface as he pulls her close like he’s the moon and she’s the tide.

 

“Hi,” Scott whispers, one hand on her, the other paddling to stay afloat as she does the same.

“Hi,” she echoes and leans in to kiss him. They make out in the water until he gets too antsy and then maneuvers her to the rock where they got in, laying her on her back before taking his time with her. He’s made it so that they came out just an arms reach away from the condom, and it’s a smart thing he did because they need it pretty quickly. It’s about the only thing that doesn’t come out covered in mud at the other side of things. Because halfway through, he rolls her off the rock and into the dirty ground next to it, and then they make each other laugh by getting each other dirty—in the kid sense of playing in wet grainy sand.

 

They use condom number eight underneath the bigger waterfall, where he takes her bent over as the spray rains down on her back, running softly down their bodies where they’re connected. She screams out his name against the rock she’s got her arms propped up on and he growls like he’s forgotten he’s a human for a while behind her. Afterwards, they’re properly clean and they find their clothes dry. The problem is just that they now have eight used condoms and they’re not exactly in a place rich on public waste bins. After some deliberation, Tessa decides to shove them into her dirty laundry plastic bag at the bottom of her re-packed rucksack to get rid of later somehow and all the way back to the villa, she feels their weight like bricks in her backpack. The only time she forgets is when they reach the boat on the beach and they’re welcomed by their rescue mission with hugs and drinks and food. She doesn’t even realise how hungry she is until she practically inhales a ham and cheese sandwich, too busy shoving it in her mouth to appreciate the view of the turquoise ocean around her as the boat sets off from the shore.

 

Scott meanwhile sits next to her on the bench of the stern like he is ready to impersonate Leonardo DiCaprio and yell ‘I’m the king of the world!’ at the top of his lungs at any moment. She shoots him a look, swallowing the last bit of sandwich down hard. And then nods her head towards Erica and Luke who have come personally, with Rani in tow.

“We’re so sorry,” Erica says, obviously not yet irked by Scott’s new and very improved mood. “When you didn’t phone in, we were about ready to call the police.”

“But I said to wait,” Rani chimes in. “I knew you were probably going to go back to the cave.”

“It was so good that Tess had that idea,” Scott says and moves to put an arm around Tessa’s shoulder but stops short when she gives him a look. Did he forget what they agreed on already? This time Erica does takes note and casts a glance their way that Tessa just shrugs off.

“He got very Indiana Jones about the whole thing,” she says, nodding towards Scott. “Very excited.”

 

“Well, we’re all glad you’re ok,” Erica enthuses, moving on as well. “Are you still up for the last evaluation tomorrow or do you think you’ll need another day?”

“No, I think we’re fine. Right, Scott?” Tessa turns to her real fake boyfriend. He nods, and it’s obvious to her he’s not trying a smidge to pay attention to anything but her neck. He’s not even looking her in the eye, gaze locked on her clavicle bone like an idiot. Only a sharp, quiet hiss in his direction makes him snap out of it and put on a regular, non-starstruck face. (She is very much happy about the way he looks at her, don’t get her wrong. But he’s too _loud_ , for lack of a better word.)

 

When the boat is docked to the pier just a brief two minute stroll down the private beach in front of the villa, Greg and Corey are already waiting for them. Their pudgy, kind-hearted cameraman and the lanky sound-guy don’t really wait to let them get off the planks before enveloping each of them into a big bear hug, one at a time.

“Oh, guys, I’m so glad you’re alright,” Greg says once they’ve broken apart.

“We felt horrible about leaving you there,” Corey chimes in, putting a large hand on Tessa’s shoulder.

“It’s alright,” Scott says, waving dismissively, only glaring at the other man’s hand on her shoulder for a millisecond before getting his act together. “It was an adventure. All that survival training was absolutely good for something.”

“Well, thank God it all turned out okay,” Greg nods. “When I saw you in that river…”

“Yeah, that was a close call,” Tessa agrees as Corey drops his hand. “In hindsight, I’m pretty sure Scott saved my life there.”  

“Please, I just climbed a vine,” he scoffs it off in that Scott-way of not taking credit for the best of his actions.

 

“You’re an idiot,” she says affectionately and the grin that earns her hits her square in the chest. It makes her miss everything for a moment, from Erica’s raised eyebrow behind them to Greg’s sideway-glance to Rani. On their way back to the villa, Tessa stays close to Scott. She wants to take his hand but knows that she can’t. Impatient to be alone with him again, she hurries them through their welcome back conversations with Justin and Jeffrey and Kaitlyn and Andrew, who huddle around them to hear all about their terrifying night alone on an island in a tropical storm. She promises everybody that they’re fine, that she and Scott just need some time to take a shower and freshen up. 

 

For the first time on the show, Tessa’s line about “taking a shower,” that was always implied to be the two of them taking it together, actually means just that. They add the ninth used condom to her laundry bag after.

“I’m amazed that you’re not getting tired,” Tessa says to him as they dry off, hoping he won’t take her complimenting his stamina the wrong way. It’s not like he finished nine times since they started _getting to know each other_. She doubts he would be able to walk if that had happened, but they just kept taking these breaks after the times _she_ came the night before and she’d expected him to fall asleep every time but he just kept nudging her back for more. She isn’t sure if he had deliberately held back from coming to be able to basically marathon-fuck her (to put it bluntly) or if he maybe has issues, which —if so— she hopes isn't because she’s bad in bed. (She’s tentatively certain that’s not the case, and that Scott might just be very Scott about it all, 150% in and all mind over matter.) Also, she really isn’t complaining. She might be a little sore but that doesn’t mean she’s got her fill of him yet. She could go on doing him possibly forever.

“I will tire, eventually,” he shrugs easily. “I’m not infinite. But we’ve got years to make up for here and you’re fucking amazing, so I could do this a few more times.” She’d take him up on it if they didn’t have to get back to the others for dinner. “It’s a bitch trying not to come all the time, though,” he adds. “I just never want it to be over, you know?”

 

 _Kill me, why don’t you, Moir,_ she thinks, seriously deliberating skipping dinner to go down on him simply for that. And so it’s definitely not her being ‘bad in bed’ that’s keeping him on his two feet, it’s his own damn, wonderful stubbornness. (And she finds herself reminded of that time he told her that he liked ‘being close’ and how she wondered if he meant physically or... _physically._ Now, she can safely say it’s both.)

 

The next morning, Tessa and Scott wake up in a real bed, entwined and comfortably drowsy. She’s infinitely glad that the camera in the room has been switched off since the babysitting challenge, and after a small breakfast of avocado and poached egg-toast in bed, she steals off to the tennis court to use their gym for cover to get rid of the now full twelve used condoms she has hidden away in her retired plastic laundry bag. (Ten and eleven were used with a break to get a midnight snack the night before, and they finally used condom number twelve at ten in the morning, after which Scott said: “Okay, now I’ll need the day,” and she had laughed and kissed him for being a soldier, making him wince: “No, seriously, stop touching me or it’ll fall off.”) 

 

She takes a detour to the tiny convenience store up the street to buy a new box of Trojans and sneaks them into their bedroom like a thief in the night. They have to be careful, she knows that, but with drawn curtains and being mindful to not make any noise, they’ll be fine for the two nights they have left in the villa. Because celibacy is absolutely not in the cards there, they’re too keen for each other for that, too stupidly happy to keep their hands and mouths and bodies to themselves.

 

Alas, their second to last day is so full, they don’t get to be irresponsible much anyway. The only silly thing they do between recording their final challenge-focused talking heads segments is a quick make-out in their bedroom while changing outfits. It’s reckless because it wrecks Tessa’s lipstick (and gets half of it on Scott) and they frantically have to fix it before Kelly, their makeup artist, can spot it and get suspicious but it’s still worth it. Thankfully, Tessa has makeup remover wipes, so when they return to talk about that fun time Scott completely “for realsies” caught a fish in a lake on a deserted island, he looks flawless and completely unkissed.

 

In the evening, Tessa feels like her mouth is in tangles, she’s talked so much. She’s infinitely glad that Hunter does most of the talking as they tape the last big evaluation segment and their host stands before them in a half-unbuttoned jeans-shirt and salmon coloured pants, his sandy blonde hair combed back from his forehead. Hunter’s hair is about the same length as Scott’s is now, Tessa notices absentmindedly. Except Hunter’s kind of stays where it is and Scott keeps complaining about his locks falling into his face. Production said he should keep it at the longer length, and Tessa told him a while ago that she likes the way it’s growing out a little, so he’s decided to leave it as is. Which is very nice of him, indeed. It’s hard to focus back on the happenings of the day, eyes glued to Scott’s flowing hair like that, but eventually she manages to return her attention back to their host doing his thing.

 

“Welcome couples, to your last night on the island,” Hunter says on the third and hopefully last take of his introductory speech. “Today, we’re gonna look back at your time here and listen to your own recaps and guesses about the moles in your midst before the audience has the chance to make up their own minds for the big finale at the Rebel in Toronto. We will start with Justin and Jeffrey. And here’s your recap, guys.”

 

They cut, happy with the delivery, and set the cameras up to get Justin and Jeffrey’s reaction to a montage of their highlight moments from the past four weeks and then move on to film the others reacting to their montages as well. Tessa cringes a little bit watching the footage, never happy to see herself on camera. But for the first time, with her newly acquired knowledge about Scott’s true feelings, she can see how he must look to people who don’t doubt that he loves her. He looks smitten, transfixed with everything she does. The way Greg’s captured him looking at her standing with little Marnie in her arms by the shore, it’s like he’s been a blind man, seeing the sun for the first time. She isn’t sure how she missed it before, how she was even able to hold his gaze when he looked at her like that but then again, when she looks at herself, she can see how she twinkled right back at him. His hand lands on hers, squeezing it lightly halfway through the clip and maybe he sees it, too. How they’re falling in love with each other all over again on camera.

 

Before Tessa can do anything stupid like cry, though, they are moved on to the second and last bit of their last night’s proceedings: the actual evaluation. Because there won’t be an elimination, the couples are each asked to point out which couple they believe is the fake one and to give their own statement to the Canadian public to convince them that they are the genuine article. Tessa imagines those statements will be shown with those handy numbers for calling and texting in to the televote. (“For Tessa and Scott, send 02!”) Because they started with the recap, Justin and Jeffrey also get to go first with their verdict and speeches. 

 

“I think we already found our culprits,” Justin begins. “Honestly I wouldn’t want to accuse either Kaitlyn and Andrew or Tessa and Scott of faking it. Even if last week was kind of off for Tess and Scottie.” Tessa’s head snaps up to look at their fellow contenders. She knew this was coming, she just hadn’t expected it from them. She’d been steeling herself for Kaitlyn to point out that the whole survival challenge had been off and awkward, but now that Justin has called them out on it, she’s afraid that if Kaitlyn mentions it too, she and Scott might look really bad going into the finale.

 

“It felt...weird there, for a second,” Justin continues. “But I don’t...no, we don’t think they’re not in love. So...yeah. We think the fakes are already gone.”

“And as for us, I think we’re just so happy to have had this amazing experience together,” Jeffrey picks up the thread, mercifully moving on from scrutinizing Tessa and Scott. “It was so much fun! And we fell even deeper in love, I think, isn’t that right, honey?”

“Oh yeah, absolutely,” agrees Justin and takes his boyfriend’s hand, their smiles bright and similar after years of being together. 

 

When it comes to her and Scott next, Tessa deliberates paying Justin and Jeffrey their suspicion back in kind, but then decides against it, strategizing that they will look nicer and more wholesome if they don’t point fingers. And Canada _loves_ nice and wholesome. 

“I think we’ll have to agree with Justin here,” she ends up saying. “I think we sent the fakes home weeks ago. So now Scott and I, we’re just in it to win that wonderful trip around the world.”

“And for our statement, the last one,” Scott begins, turning to face her. “I just want to say that I love Tessa. This wonderful person sitting beside me.” The way he fixes his eyes on her is like a magnet, she can’t help but turn to him, too. Something peculiar happens when she does, where the world around them blurs into white background noise, her vision zeroing in on Scott and his almost amber eyes, the way he makes her feel like she’s precious. Nothing matters but him, everything fades into the periphery. The others, the cameras, her control over her facial features, it’s all forgotten as he talks. “She makes everything better, everything...brighter. And I hope every day that I won’t let her down. I hope I didn’t so far, did I?” he leans in, furrowing his brow in question.

“No, never,” she blurts out, raw and honest, before she can moderate herself. This is the most honest she has been in front of the cameras so far. She just loves him so much, he could never let her down. It’s not possible. Scott laughs a bit at her eager answer but she can’t blame him, she must’ve sounded so smitten. It isn’t until Kaitlyn starts speaking that Tessa snaps out of it.

 

“Well, I do have to say, and I’m really sorry,” Kaitlyn starts sweetly but still making a face like she’s eating a lemon, “but I do have to say that we don’t really think Justin and Jeffrey are for real. Guys, we’re so sorry. It’s just...we don’t really see the spark, right?” Kaitlyn shrugs, an image of regret that Tessa is actually inclined to believe. (Kaitlyn is playing the game, and she believes this is the only way to play it, apparently.) “So our last vote, if we had one, would go to you being the fake couple. Sorry.” 

“Yeah, sorry guys,” Andrew agrees and Tessa shoots Scott a look that he acknowledges with a curt nod. (‘They’re being unwise throwing people under the bus at this stage,’ is what they’re agreeing on without needing words.) 

“It’s just when you have a love like Kaitlyn and I do, you kind of see when it’s the real deal, you know?” Andrew continues, smiling graciously at Tessa and Scott. “And we figure we wanna win for us and all the other real couples. Because we want to share in that happiness with them. That happiness of a perfect, fulfilling, strong relationship like we have.” 

 

Tessa smiles gratefully at him, downright beaming, and makes a note in her mind to never be actual friends with them after this. It’s not like they aren’t nice people...but the way they compete, it doesn’t sit right with her. Which is saying a lot coming from her, who’s been lying all this time. It’s just something about that saccharine sweetness that rings so terribly untrue, even if she knows they _are_ really a thing. It makes her question the quality of that relationship, honestly, if not the fact that there is one. After all, people so eager to demonstrate how they have the greatest love of all time, seem like they indeed have something to prove. But to be fair, this show kind of requires them to. Just maybe, they don’t need to be quite as extra about it.

 

Of course she doesn’t share any of this at the subsequent wrap party for the cast and crew, or even the next day at lunch before they’re each taken to the airport at their different flight times. Tessa and Scott leave first, their flight outbound for the Toronto airport at one in the afternoon. It takes two hours on the plane, wedged between Scott and a lady with a baby, to realise that their time on the Caymans is truly over. Mindlessly watching Scott nap with his head lolling back against the window, she remembers saying goodbye to Greg, who ultimately turned out to be the hardest new friend to part with.

 

“You and Scott seem fine,” he had said, his camera switched off and sitting beside his feet in the front yard of the villa, waiting for the car to take them to the airport. “Feels okay to let you go back now.”

“We are fine,” Tessa had smiled, not really understanding why he would keep them there had they not been fine.

“I was a bit worried there for a bit,” Greg told her, as if he had heard her thoughts.

“We had a bit of a tough stretch,” she admitted, because if it was no use pretending that everything was just peachy all the time with anybody, it was with Greg. “But the island made us have to work together...so we pulled ourselves through, I guess.” She shrugs nonchalantly and he smiles kindly, letting her act like it’s all not a big deal after the fact.

 

“Look, I know you’re the fakes, right?” he'd said after a while, his grave tone making Tessa tense up. “And I know you’ve got pretty good chances of winning this thing...but if I can just overstep every boundary for a second...think about it.” He put a firm, imploring grip on her forearm, searching in her eyes for something she was very loathe to give up. “You know I watched you two probably the most out of everybody here. I think you’ve got something special. Maybe that’s worth more than some money.”

 

“That’s really sweet,” Tessa had said and set her face in a tight smile, one that she didn’t know then will eventually turn into her public mask in the future, as mask that says what she said to Greg next: “But Scott and I, we’re really just the best of friends. Completely platonic, you know?” She had topped this with a small nod, slight enough to seem unconscious.

 

She’d always been a good liar when it comes to her feelings regarding Scott, at least she firmly believes she was. So this surely wasn’t going to be a problem. 

 

Greg had let her go to the car after a long, fatherly hug and then went on to Scott, sending them on their way. But as he had watched Jeremy pull their car out of the driveway, Tessa could feel his eyes following them until the very last moment. She doesn’t know if he suspects anything, but she figures it doesn’t really matter now either way. He can’t know anything for sure, and if anybody doubts if Scott and her actually love each other for real after all, she can always just put it on the acting. If they make people believe, it’s only because they did their job right. That’s a pretty good response, isn’t it? She is musing about that when Scott opens his eyes and blinks at her.

 

“What are you thinking about?” He mumbles.

“You,” she says, not strictly lying. Deliberating what to tell people should they inquire on their chemistry in the aftermath of the show is something they’ll deal with later. It’s not that important. She doesn’t expect anyone to really care about them anyway. After all, who really gives a shit about two kids from Ontario who took part in an admittedly rather trashy reality TV show?

 

A lot of people, apparently.

 

She learns that once they arrive at the airport, and aside from Joe and Alma, there’s also three real life Canadian paparazzi waiting for them to snap pictures and a gaggle of people forming a noisy crowd around them as soon as the first person recognises them with the words “That’s Tessa and Scott from _What’s Love?!_!!”

Truthfully, Tessa is completely overwhelmed with the attention and doesn’t really know how to handle either the little girls asking for her autograph, or the requests for photos—the ones where she’s supposed to just pose with Scott are the weirdest of them all. That’s only topped by the onslaught of “So, you can tell us, are you a real couple? You so are, right? Oh, I hope you win! You’re a real couple, aren’t you?” She doesn’t know how to answer that. 

 

“You’re gonna have to watch the finale,” Scott says on a wink and then pulls her in by the shoulder, wonderfully vague and charming and her ribs tighten around her heart with affection for him, catching Alma’s wondering glance as she slots into her son’s firm grip. “Thanks so much guys for the support,” Scott continues. “But we still have a bit of a drive ahead of us and it’s been a long day.” Friendly and approachable as ever, he compliments them away from the attention they attracted all on his own and Tessa relaxes, even if a couple of them follow them semi-inconspicuously all the way to short-term parking. 

 

“You’re gonna get a lot more of that in the future,” Joe says, as soon as he makes the right onto the highway. It’s a bit weird being back in Scott’s parents’ car as if nothing has happened, both of them not having talked at all about if their families are supposed to know that a whole lot of things have changed since their last drive between London and Toronto.

“Is it really that big of a deal?” Scott asks, catching Tessa’s eye briefly, before turning to his parents in the front. He doesn’t seem decided on whether or not to tell them, either. 

“Oh, Scottie, you have no idea,” Alma sighs. “Even people in Ilderton who know the truth are speculating, at the viewing parties at the fire station—”

“You had _viewing parties_?” Scott cuts in, sounding mortified.

“Certainly,” Alma nods. “There’s chatter even at home. And we had so many questions from outside. The interview requests started coming in after the second episode aired...we fielded them all, but people want to know... stuff.” 

 

Tessa wants to hear more about _that_ , but then the conversation is derailed by Joe indicating the bus they are overtaking, specifically the ad on the side. Tessa and Scott find their faces from the promo photoshoot grinning back at them, slapped next to the logo of the show, all plastic-photoshopped grins. _Oh boy._

 

 

 

“We have questions, too, you know,” Alma admits, eventually. They’ve been in the car for the better part of an hour, talking about the shoot, the island, the other couples and the friends that they made among the crew. But suddenly the car seems way too small for that new leg of the conversation, because Tessa can tell by the sound of Scott’s mother’s voice what she is getting at.

“Questions about what?” Scott asks.

“You know,” Joe replies vaguely, like Tessa predicted he would. “I mean, we _know_ you kids.”

“And you’ve always loved each other,” Alma agrees. “You’re best friends. But your father and I, and Kate and your siblings for that matter, we couldn’t help but wonder…”

“Do we _have_ to talk about this right now?” Scott groans and inches closer to Tessa, which might be the last thing he should have done if he wanted to put a stop to this line of questioning.

“Oh, so you _are_ ,” Alma says and turns all the way around in the front, which makes Tessa focus very diligently on her knees, bare and tan under her short shorts.

“ _Mo-ohm_ ,” Scott whines and squirms.

“See, I told you,” Alma says to Joe and Tessa knows she’s smirking without needing to look.

“Mom!” Scott repeats, sounding twelve and she can hear how he’s blushing, feels it on her own cheeks.

“Well, am I right or am I right?” his mother challenges.

“Maybe, yeah, okay, fine,” Scott grumbles and the heat of embarrassment closes in around Tessa’s neck like someone just put a collar on her. Is he really going to talk to his parents about them getting together (biblically) while they are going to be stuck in a car for another hour? “But we can’t really tell anyone, alright?”

 

There is a loaded silence afterwards, in which Tessa only feels Alma turn to face them again because she can’t bear to look up at her lover’s (boyfriend’s?) mother.

“We’re very happy for you,” says Alma after a long while. “You should tell the family, though. Just so everybody knows it’s important to keep their traps shut. God knows your cousin Drew could use the input.”

“What did that little punk do?” Scott asks, perking up.

“He tweeted something about how girls should come and marry him, because they will be related to the two of you then,” Alma says. Scott groans.

“Well, it’s not bad for the show,” Tessa mutters sheepishly. “Makes us sound legit.”

“Except we’re not supposed to be,” Scott says. “This stuff is giving me a headache.”

“Don’t worry,” Joe hurries. “It’s all good, just a bit more attention than we expected. We really are happy for you two, though. Everyone will be.”

 

“Honestly, just really don’t tell,” Scott reiterates. “One million dollars is riding on us being...us from before, you know.”

“Knuckleheads, you mean,” Joe muses and Alma grunts out a laugh. 

“Haha, yeah, very funny,” Scott says humorlessly and his hand finds Tessa’s on her thigh. “We figured it out now.”

“Only took you a stint on a national TV show,” Alma chuckles.

“And seventeen years,” Joe chimes in and they laugh like they’re the world’s greatest comedians. Tessa isn’t sure yet how she feels about them knowing. Only that she doesn’t appreciate the smugness that all the Virtue and Moir siblings in attendance as well as her mother share in when they arrive at Joe and Alma’s house. Everyone is there, save for Jordan, who is travelling for work, and her brother Kevin, who lives in Vancouver and couldn’t make the trip out. They’re all waiting for them with a big celebratory dinner of which their new relationship status is predictably the buzzpoint. There is much ado made about their brothers having “known this was gonna happen forever” and going “thank God you finally figured it out.”

 

The good natured, if borderline prying, questions continue until Scott finally snaps and tells them some more details than “It just happened, leave us alone.” It’s a good preparation for the Welcome Home Party his friends throw them the night after, except there, they’re not answering the questions honestly. 

 

For now, the only people that will know their little secret are the immediate family. After more deliberation, they even decide to keep cousins out of the loop. Well, cousins like Drew at least. Tessa is pretty sure Scott will tell Cara and Sheri, his aunt’s daughters, because they’re basically like sisters to him anyway. He doesn’t tell Adam and everyone else though, and not Patrick Chan either, his figure skating friend that got them on the show in the first place. Tessa meanwhile aches to tell Midori and Liz, standing by the guacamole at the buffet table at the fire station at the party, but can’t. It kills her a little bit.

 

Around them, everything is abuzz, the crowd made up of mostly the same people as it was at their first get-together weeks before, except there are even more people gathered around now. Even Jordan made it out to Ilderton after work. She’s been busy chatting with Scott’s brother Charlie by the fire trucks for ten minutes, which is why Tessa doesn’t feel too bad spending a little more time with her girlfriends.

“We missed you,” Midori says. “You need to tell us _everything_. But first: episode three, man! Looked amazing, that music video! Sensual stuff. Rihanna would’ve been proud.” 

 

Her friend fans herself with her hand over-dramatically, and it’s strange for Tessa that the dance challenge already feels ages ago when her friends have only just seen it. Now they have to wait until episode four has aired until they go back to Toronto to do the live show.

“That dance was pretty fiery, too,” Liz agrees. “And to pick _Carmen_ , that was a bold choice.”

“That’s what Marie-France said,” Tessa tells her, secretly happy to be able to name-drop like this. 

“I know, they showed that in the scene,” Midori nods. “I did like the first song you had a little better, though. A little inappropriate Nina Simone. That was hot.”

“We thought it was a bit too out there, maybe,” Tessa tells them, lying through her teeth.

“That was too ‘out there’ but the hot tub in ep one wasn’t?!” Liz laughs.

“Honestly,” Midori agrees. “Gotta applaud Scott for looking _that_ hot and bothered. God knows, I’ve never been attracted to him and I wouldn’t wanna touch him with a ten foot pole but, damn girl...that made even _me_ weak in the knickers.”

“What do you mean you wouldn't wanna touch him with a ten foot pole?” Tessa asks, slightly offended on Scott’s behalf (and a little for herself, too, because she very much has touched that without a pole, and frequently).

“That’s your take-away, Tess?” Liz chuckles. “I’m still stuck on the weak in the knickers bit...Sexy Scott making Mimi a grammatically incorrect Brit.”

 

“He _was_ sexy in that hot tub,” Midori nods, shrugging apologetically at Tessa and ignoring Liz. “And, don’t get me wrong, he is a handsome man but, you know, not for me.”

“Why?” Tessa asks, taking a long sip from her straw, pulling a generous amount of mimosa down her throat, the grip on her solo cup a little wavering. Does her friend find her new boyfriend unsuitable?

“ _Because._ ” Midori says. “You’ve been in love with him forever and he’s obviously completely lost for you. No self-respecting woman or even halfway decent friend would get in there.”

 

“Shh,” Tessa hisses and looks around her shoulder nervously. “People are not supposed to know that I was...you know. They’ll think we’re together.”

“Um, aren’t they _supposed_ to think that?” Liz asks, her brow furrowed.

“Not around here,” Tessa grumbles. “Everyone here knows that we’re not.”

“We all _used_ to know that,” Liz says pointedly. “But I agree with Mimi, he looks like he worships you. Can’t you, I don’t know...don’t you think there might be something there, after all?”

“No,” Tessa says, quickly. “That’s not...it’s not happening.” She looks around, hoping not to look as nervous as she feels and frantically tries for a way out of the conversation. “I’m gonna go say hi to my sister real quick, alright? She came all the way from Toronto.” 

The problem isn’t that she can’t lie, the problem is that her face is taut from trying not to grin all goofily and give herself away right then and there, so she really needs to get away from her girlfriends’ knowing eyes, and fast. 

 

Stealthily, she ducks out of there with a ‘See you later,’ and makes a beeline for her sister. (Jordan, unlike Tessa’s friends, had been told the big news on the ride over from Tessa’s apartment in the backseat of Scott’s car, to a terribly anticlimactic and unsurprised reaction that went something like: ‘Honey, I knew from the stuff he said about you in your homestory...and actually, I’ve known since you were fifteen and he took you to prom, so...’ Somewhat stiltedly, they talk about everything but relationships for a while until Adam finds them, Scott in tow, and pulls Tessa to the beer keg with them, leaving Jordan by herself to ponder which noodle salad to try next.

 

“Man, it’s so good to see you guys again,” Adam says when Tessa and Scott are both served with new red cups. “Tess, you look great.”

“Thanks,” she smiles, fixing her hair under his scrutiny as Scott scoots closer to her. “Thank you for setting this up, too. It’s so good to see everybody again.”

“Nah, we’re just happy to have you home,” Adam says easily. “So you can deal with the madness yourselves.”

“Is it bad? Mom already told me a little…” Scott shifts where he stands, even closer into Tessa’s space, making her wonder if she should inch away from him a bit. 

 

Maybe she’s being paranoid but she feels like people are watching them, analysing their positions in relation to each other, trying to read their body language and she doesn’t like it. But then again, she has no intention of being away from Scott. Truthfully, she would very much like to piggyback him for the rest of the night and kiss his head every three to five seconds. (Or just send anybody away and get it on with him on a fire truck.) So she decides on staying where she is. Scott has always been tactile with her, they’ve always been close, so being near to him at this party should damn well be okay and not raise too much suspicion. Right? Right. She refuses to be weird about this, not in their own home.

 

“Dude, it’s insane,” Adam answers Scott, hitting him hard on the bicep. “There’s people trying to hack our community facebook group to figure out if you’re the real deal or not. Someone tried to catfish Mike to get him to tell on you guys.”

“Oh God,” Scott groans.

“I don’t know, people are getting intense over it,” Adam shrugs.

“Cara told us this morning that there’s people coming into the shop occasionally that just ask about us,” Tessa tells them, which is probably news only to her and Scott.

“The shop, the rink, the pub...you name it,” Adam says. “But to be fair, you did put on _quite_ a show.”

 

“I’m gonna get a drink,” Scott says, with his ‘noping-out-of-here’-voice. And does just that.

“We were just doing our job,” Tessa says helplessly, left to fend for herself. “Acting and everything.” She’s already tired of people asking and it’s barely been two days. She can’t wait for it all to blow over after the finale. This invasion of their privacy is exhausting.

“That hot tub thing was my favourite part of that ‘acting’ stuff,” Adam laughs, fully taking the piss. “Could’ve lived my life happily without knowing what Scott’s O-face looks like.”

“We didn’t—” Tessa nearly snaps but Adam cuts in, still laughing heartily.

“Chill, I’m just pulling your leg,” he winks at her. She’s deeply uneasy, feeling like all of their friends have seen too much during their public viewing parties, that they know them too well to be duped by their platonic party line. She’s just about to delve some more into her ‘it’s acting’ spiel, the one she is still refining, one person at a time, when Scott drops by to save her. Bless his soul.

“Come on, Charlie wants to say hi,” he says, snatching her by the elbow and dragging her to his brother Danny and his very pregnant wife Tessa (Tessa Virtue had been there first, mind you) and their daughter Charlotte. Being around them is a little easier. Because they know (Charlotte doesn’t but she’s barely four, so she still believes this Tessa is her uncle Scott’s wife anyway). With them, Tessa doesn’t feel like she has to be on her guard about what she says so much. Everyone else seems to be on the look-out for _signs._

 

Three days later, it turns out that this is the worst thing about being back in Canada. The constant ducking away from attention. It takes half a week back in their apartment building in London to accept that the constant intrusions into their daily life will not stop until the show is over. After two shifts back at the Bag Lady, Tessa’s boss agrees to give her another two weeks off because people crowd her during her shifts like nobody’s business and Alma and her sister Carol complain about their girls at synchro completely losing it around Scott, even if he’s been helping coach them for years. It’s like he’s a new person to them since he’s been on television. (“Their skating is actually worse when Scott’s at the boards!” Alma tells Tessa on the phone when she suggests that they leave the area for the time being, because it’s all getting a bit too intense.) 

 

In the end, they decide to hide out at Tessa’s uncle’s vacation home at Lake Huron. Since he is currently travelling with his family in Thailand, the cottage is just sitting there and it’s remote enough for them to have a little freedom and peace, to move about without getting cornered by ‘fans.’ On Thursday morning, Tessa sneaks out of his apartment to hers to over-pack a suitcase and before the sun has fully risen, they’re on their way to Bayfield, leaving the prying eyes and grocery store selfie-requests behind them. 

 

Once there, they spend most of their time making up for lost time in the king sized bed, but also watch a lot of  Netflix and take walks down the lake, trying not to get spotted. And Tessa goes through a very intense couple of days researching social media. She figures that if she can’t work at the Café for the time being, she can at least try and use what popularity she has apparently acquired to maybe open up some future career opportunities. (Erica called the other day asking her to retweet something about the show, and when Tessa told her she didn’t have a twitter, Erica almost hung up on her.) So on day three at the cottage, with Scott napping on the couch with his head on her lap, Tessa sets up a Twitter and an Instagram, for both of them. That’s when she discovers the ‘VirtueMoir’ hashtag—and that’s a ride and a half.

 

They have shippers. This is a new term Tessa learns in the tag: people who are fans of their relationship together. And to her medium surprise, they seem to be the favourites to win the show. Not that she is _actually_ surprised, because they went in hard, but people online have no doubt that they are a couple and that they’re the ones who should win. There are countless posts of people just going wild imagining them on the world trip they will never go on. There are others posting gifs of them, little scenes from their time on the show, mostly Scott looking at her, kissing her, Tessa holding him, being supportive, and they use a lot of heart-eyes emojis. It’s a frenzy. When Scott stirs on her lap, he finds her completely engrossed in their ‘fandom’s’ musings. By the end of the day, she has made their first Twitter and Instagram posts and people go veritably insane over it. She can watch it all unfold in real time, exploding on her smartphone.

 

“This is so weird,” Scott says, watching his own phone screen light up again and again with notifications after she’s talked him through responding to a tweet or two. “These are _strangers._ And they’re super invested in us.”

“There’s also a couple girls very invested in us being the fake couple, though,” Tessa tells him, working her hand up to his neck, tousling her fingers into the outgrowing ends of his hair. 

“Why?” he asks, tilting his head at her.

“Baby,” she grins. “‘Cause they wanna take my place.” He really has no idea what an effect he has on women. He always acts all cocky but he doesn’t believe he actually has game, when in reality, he’s the real fucking deal and everyone can see it.

“Pshhhh,” Scott scoffs and smacks a hard kiss on her lips. “Nobody will ever take your place. Ever.”

“I’m counting on it,” Tessa grins and kisses him back in that way that lets him know he gets to carry her off to the bedroom soon. (The last box of Trojans she bought is long since empty...and as of four days before, she’s got her 3-month shot, so she didn’t buy any more beyond that.)

 

After what turns out to be one of their more adventurous sessions, they lie in bed and Tessa takes the time to really admire the view and feel of the cottage while Scott keeps practicing braiding her hair (it’s his personal boredom cure, learning how to french-braid her hair with an admittedly very slow learning curve). The house and the master bedroom in particular are a beautiful space, all shabby chic and gorgeously heartfelt decor-wise. 

  

Her uncle’s wife has put everything together to have it feel like a Norwegian lake house, with a rose blush and navy theme, stuffed with tasteful vintage furniture all over. The large windows of the bedroom open up into the greenery surrounding the place. From where they lie, they can even see an edge of the water, the sky darkening by the minute, but still drenched in soft orange from the sun that went down while they were making love. The scent of that still lingers in the sheets they’re tangled in and Tessa thinks that it might be her favourite thing in the world. How his body smells like hers and her mouth tastes like his at the end of it, when they clutch each other spent and sated. It’s all over the crisp bedding, settling over them before they eventually have to chase each other into the shower naked. It’s bliss. 

 

And the best thing is that nobody knows where they are. That much she knows from her research. Nobody knows where they’re cooped up and it’s making people _crazy._ But Tessa has no interest in enlightening them at all. She’s peachy just the way she is. She and Scott haven’t talked much about keeping away from the public, the necessity of it had become increasingly clear while they were home. Evidently, since they are now an hour away from London at a lake house in hiding. Except they’re not really hiding, they’re just...in another place where there are less people to see them. She’s fine with that, she can think of few nicer things than riding out the honeymoon-phase in a cute lakeside cottage (not that it feels like there is an end to the honeymooning in sight, she is so damn happy every day, she’s not quite sure how her body handles it, the grinning alone is making her jaw hurt at night). Scott has some misgivings but gladly, they have nothing to do with her.

 

“I just miss my family, you know,” he tells her a little later. They’re sitting on the deck, her feet propped up on his lap as he puts a generous amount of tomato salad onto her terribly stylish bamboo plate. “I basically haven’t been home in one and a half months. Tessa is gonna have the baby any day now and I can’t be around for it. Plus, I can’t do anything about Cara and Sheri getting badgered at the store. I just feel like I should be there, you know?”

“It’s not for much longer,” she comforts him, dropping her hand to his knee to squeeze it. “After the finale it’ll all be over. And you’ll totally drive up to see the baby, that’s not even a question.”

“Yeah, I think I will, maybe we can just sneak you in, too? But anyway, you know, I’m not sure that this situation will be much different after,” he sounds concerned. “Adam was right, people are... _intense_ about us.”

 

“Not when we come out as the non-couple,” Tessa shrugs, entirely unbothered and certain of her prediction. “People will move on.”

“What if they don’t believe us?” he asks.

“Why wouldn’t they? When we tell them we’re not, why would they think we’re lying?”

“I don’t know,” Scott says, making a face, “maybe because we _are_?”

“Don’t worry,” she insists. “Nobody will know.”

“It’s just...they better not, you know,” he muses, putting the spoons back into the salad bowl. “I looked into our contract. We need to be super careful. Especially if we win—”

“Which we will,” she interjects.

 

“Which we will,” he repeats dutifully before he continues. “They could sue us for fraud if we win and we actually are a couple. Even if we’re just sleeping together. That’s actually what it says in the fine print. It says if we’re arguably in a ‘romantic relationship or physically intimate,’ they got us by the balls. They’re not kidding around.”

“How would they know if we’re intimate or not?” Tessa challenges mildly. “We could be having sex all day and they would never know.”

“Well, we kind of _are_ having sex all day,” Scott replies and smirks, a bit smug. 

 

They do still have an obscene amount of sex, it’s a bit ridiculous. Like they’re both trying to cram in as much physical exploration of the other as literally humanly possible, about the same amount of fooling around they must have missed by not starting to sleep together when he was seventeen. He’s an angel, really. She never gets tired and he’s stubbornly not letting her wear him out. Which is a fun thing to learn about him, alongside the fact that Boyfriend-Scott is like Best-Friend-Scott, only that he’s about 20% more protective when she’s operating a vehicle, 60% cuter in the mornings, and about 45% more careful not to be gross in front of her (so far, he’s only farted twice in her presence since they left the island and both times were accidents!). And of course he’s now 100% more sleeping with her than he had been before. And because they’ve been competitive with each other since forever about skating and running and whatnot, they’re now obviously competitive about who can outlast the other in their horizontal exploits. So far there is no clear winner but she doesn’t mind that _at all._

 

“Exactly,” she grins. “And are the bloodhounds here? Or the lawyers? No.” She tilts her head at him, breathing long and deep, so he calms down with her, so he just enjoys the moment like she does. They made it, they’ve got each other now, everything else will be just fine. “Relax, we’re okay. And trust me, no one will care after we’re outed as the fake couple. There’s no way anybody will give a damn about us after that.”

 

(She’s wrong. But she doesn’t know that yet.)

 

 

**END OF PART ONE**

 

****

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What do you mean End Of Part One? Yes...times are changing for our favourite no-longer-bachelors-in-paradise.
> 
> PS: I am aware that I did not write Scott POV for the last chapter yet but I found that I couldn't..he's been so open and vulnerable with her, I would have only repeated myself with a full length chapter, but I will try to get back to you in the comments with some deets :)  
> Plus...there will be more from Scott to come now ;)


	9. There’s A Name For It

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I will get back to your comments, I promise! Just work is a lot and I try to get as much writing done as I can, please forgive me!
> 
> We are now in Part Two. Things will get complicated.
> 
> But first, have some very not safe for work happenings...and the answer to the question on everybody's mind...who will actually win that stupid reality TC show?!
> 
> (Honestly, though, don't read this at work.)
> 
> Thank you as always to KIM, KEL and FAIRWINDS09 and a very special thank you to skatetogether13 who checked the ballet-terminology in this for me. You are all angels and I love you!

**PART TWO: SCOTT**

 

 ****Scott Moir doesn’t remember the day he met Tessa Virtue, it was too long ago and he was too little. The only thing he does remember clearly is that she had this big roaring laugh that seemed too big for her tiny body; she still has that exact same laugh today, but it’s gotten a little harder to get it out of her. (It’s the task of his life.) And while he doesn’t remember the day he met her, Scott Moir does remember, in perfect clarity, the day that he fell in love with her. It took him a while to realise it, but he knows now that it happened the night he took her to prom when she was fifteen. Technically it wasn’t _Prom_ , it was a school dance, but it was the only school dance Tessa ever went to, as the others thrown by her school she’d not attended for lack of dates (and close friends, quite honestly). 

 

He had never understood why Tessa struggled so much to make friends in Toronto, until he had argued with her that she should not pass up on school dances simply because she didn’t have a date, so he declared he’d be the one going with her, and had actually _met_ the people from her school. They weren’t especially terrible, in fact he had gotten along with them well enough for Tessa to get a little short with him at the beginning of the night. (Because there she’d been, struggling for years to make these people like her and he just swooped in and charmed them like it was nothing. This wasn’t near the truth but Tessa felt like it was.) 

 

No matter how much they liked Scott either way, they were fundamentally different from Tess and him, stuck up in that uptown-way that didn’t leave gaps for anyone ‘beneath’ them to get into. Tessa had tried, her earrings and shoes always as expensive as Kate could buy them, so she would look like the others in her school uniform, but they could always tell she was a phoney. That’s what Tessa had told him back then at least. It was what he had felt radiating off of her peers as he met them, too.

 

He remembers the party, the dance floor and the music, the spiked punch and the way-too-short cocktail dresses on the way too young girls. Tessa hadn’t seemed too young for him that night, but the others had. Immature and vain. Tess had been anything but. Even if she would have had good reason to be vain. She had looked like an angel when he picked her up at Jordan’s new apartment, where they were going to stay the night after the dance. 

 

He had been sitting with her sister in the kitchen, discussing the latest Leafs scores when Tessa had joined them, wearing a baby blue dress, with frills and glitter. It had almost looked like an ice skating outfit, the shade at war with the tone of red she’d dyed her hair recently but breathtaking all the same. She was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen in real life. Had always been. But until that point in time in Jordan’s kitchen, he hadn’t really _known._ (He’d known, alright, he just hadn’t...well, it hadn’t been obvious enough before, how his heart leapt and then stopped in his chest.) That night, it would not be ignored.

 

Hours later, he had pulled her to her feet from their seats at a table near the back and led her to the dance floor. They had danced around to a bunch of top 40 covers by the party band for a while, until the music shifted drastically into slow-jam territory and Tessa had cast him a wavering look. They’d watched enough teen comedies together to know that this could be a ‘loaded moment’ but Scott wouldn’t have it. He had no use for being awkward with her. So he had just pulled her in. Her fiery red hair tickled his nose when she put her head beside his, dancing cheek to cheek to an acoustic version of ‘Blurry’ by _Puddle of Mudd_. 

 

_Everything’s so blurry and everyone’s so fake...but you could be my someone, you could be my scene._

 

She smelled like milk and coconut body butter. He knew this precisely because he had asked her in the car what it was she had put on. Because he liked it, he liked it a lot. He liked the scent of it filling his car so much, he’d almost missed the exit for her school. She kept using it after, actually uses it to this day, but he won’t flatter himself thinking it has anything to do with him telling her how he felt about it, back during the slow dance. When the buttery scent of coconut and apricots wafted from her neck to his nostrils as the song went on and he found he didn’t want it to end...because once it ended, he’d have to let her go.

 

_You know that I’ll protect you from all of the obscene._

 

“You smell pretty amazing, kiddo,” he’d told her under his breath, slowly turning her in tiny circles on the floor. “Better than all these stuck up bitches here. And you look better too.”

“As long as I keep my nose hidden in your hair,” she’d mumbled back, like she was making a funny joke, and he’d snapped, just a little.

 

He’d leaned back, grappled to put her skinny face into his hands and shook his head gravely at her, staring at her with as much vehemence as he could muster, drawing heavily on his years of ice dancing dramatics.

“Your nose is beautiful,” he had said. “ _You’re_ beautiful, T.”

She had smiled a little, her eyebrows knotting together, and then she’d looked down. She hadn’t believed him. 

 

She hopefully believes him now, he thinks, as he puts a strand of her now long and dyed dark brown hair over an other, picks up a new strand and adds it to the first. Fishtail-braids come a lot easier to him than french-braids do. She hums under his touch, her back leaning more against his knees where she sits cross-legged in front of him, both of them squinting into the morning light falling in through the blinds. He likes these mornings with her. Honestly, he likes _all_ the time in bed with her. 

 

It’s just that the days outside of bed drag on and on. They’re nearly at an end, though, so that is something. It’s just two more days until he has to drive them out to Toronto to assure Canada one more time that they are the country’s biggest love story while simultaneously keeping Erica and the rest of production convinced that they are anything but. He’s not certain that he’s looking forward to all of that but at least something will be happening.

 

He’s getting antsy at the lake house, even if it’s just been about a week, he feels like they’ve been cooped up there forever. And as much as he would like to, he can’t spend all his time making love to Tessa. But come to think of it...today, so far, on this young morning, they haven’t done anything yet. So maybe that could be a fun activity, to shorten the hours before they can find out what their life will be going forward. Because, believe it or not, Scott Moir, too, is curious to find out who Canada will choose to be the winner of _What’s Love Got To Do With It?!_  

 

On the one hand, of course, he wants to win but on the other, he has a bad kind of feeling in the pit of his stomach when he imagines that they will. Something about being careful what you wish for, something about Tessa and him pretending not to love each other, which seems more fantastical every day they spend wrapped up in each other at this lake. Regardless, he still wants to get there. The waiting around is making him restless. 

 

“Are you slightly bored or is that just me?” he mutters, once he has tied an elastic around the somewhat presentable fishtail he has made out of his girlfriend’s hair.

“I’m pretty good,” she replies, turning her head to look at him over her shoulder. “Want me to braid _your_ hair?”

Scott can’t help but chuckle. “Good luck with that,” he says, ruffling a hand through his locks. It’s longer than it used to be now, but nowhere near braiding length. “No, I was thinking we could maybe do something _interesting._ ” (‘Interesting’ is code for sex and from the way she starts grinning, she understands as much.)

“What did you have in mind?” she purrs and then turns around, so they end up with their knees touching, facing each other.

 

“Well, I thought we could tell each other...you know, some stuff that we always wanted to do, _exercise-wise_.” There’s some more euphemisms Tessa doesn’t need, but it amuses him to see her smirk when he makes them. “And then do it, maybe.”

“Like circular training?” she asks him and winks. 

“If that’s what you're into,” Scott shrugs. “Except naked.” The idea isn’t new, he’s been thinking about quizzing her on her deepest, darkest fantasies forever, and now just seems like a good time. They have nothing else to do, so why not explore a little bit more what makes each other tick? Tessa laughs, presumably at his latest joke and he grins at her, very pleased with himself.

“Okay,” she grins back. “So what stuff did you always want to do?”

 

“Um, okay,” he stammers. He hadn’t expected to go first. His great big fantasy is kind of kinky, low-key kinky but kinky still. And he had rather wanted to hear Tessa’s first. But Tess gets what Tess wants. “So, uh, I would like to, maybe…” he coughs. _Man up, Scott_ , he thinks. _You’ve seen each other’s dirty bits, you’ve slept with her more times than you can count off the top of your head, she loves you. Tell her what you want to do._ He clears his throat and wills his voice to be even. “Maybe...tie you up,” he confesses shakily. “If you want to.”

 

“Yeah,” Tessa breathes instantly, her mouth sounding paper-dry. “Yeah, we could do that.”

“Cool, cool, cool, yeah,” Scott mumbles. The idea that she’s up for it is making his throat feel tight and his boxer briefs feel tighter. “Let’s do it,” he tries a smile and hopes it’s not a lusty, pathetic grimace. “And you? What do you want?”

“Let’s talk about that after,” she bites her lip, tilts her head so the braid falls from her shoulder and exposes her neck. That delicious neck that smells like coconut and apricots. Hmm, he wants to taste that. He wants to taste that when she’s tied to the headboard and writhing in pleasure for him, just for him. Shit, this was the best idea he could have had this fine morning. He even forgoes her suggestion of having breakfast before getting started because he’s that excited.

 

“Just...stay here and don’t move while I get some...ropes or something,” he tells her, clamouring out of bed so fast he almost tangles one of his legs into the sheets and trips out of bed, nearly landing on his face.

 

Her roaring laughter carries all the way to the living room where Scott realises there is nothing he can realistically use for ties. Which is unfortunate. Because he would really like so much to tie her up. For a moment he deliberates using her uncles’ ties that he knows are in the dresser in the bedroom but that feels a bit wrong. He paces through the living room, then the kitchen, and then stops in front of the cabinet, having an epiphany. The dish towels. Those would work. _Yes, that’s perfect_ , he thinks, picks two especially large ones from the assortment and takes them back to the bedroom. 

 

He stops short in the doorway when he sees that she’s completely naked on the mattress, blinking up at him with a smile.

“Woah,” is his only, very eloquent response to that. “You didn’t wait for me.”

“I figured it’s hard to undress when you’re tied up,” she tells him. “So I took care of it. Are you going to...you know?” Scott nods, his mouth agape, like an idiot.

 

Moved to join her, going to her on unsteady feet, he climbs up on the bed to see her scoot closer to the headboard and put her arms out, closing a hand each around the rods of the headboard, as far left and right as she can reach. It takes all Scott has not to just toss the dish cloths aside and go to town on her just for her eagerness to please him him, entertain his silly cravings. But then again, she has been so very helpful already, getting into position and everything, keening up when he hovers over her, fastening the towel-ties around her wrists. It would be a shame not to do it now.

 

“Is this okay?” he asks her once he’s happy with the bounds. “Not too tight?”

“Just fine,” she grins, far too eager for him to stay even remotely calm, he’s already way too excited and she’s way too naked and way too tied to the bed, the image of one of his longest standing fantasies brought to life. 

“Do you…,” he starts and then trips over his words. “Can I, uh, can I...blindfold you?” 

He looks down at her, locks eyes, trying to catch his breath from how they twinkle. “Okay.”

“Only if you want,” he hurries to say.

“I want,” Tessa promises.

“ _Nice_ ,” he sounds like a kid who got a _Playstation_ for Christmas and he’s well aware. It’s just that all his dreams are coming true and he can’t really believe it.

 

“Is this an old fantasy?” she asks him, merely grinning at his immature response, not commenting on it.

“Pretty,” he replies, getting between her legs on his knees, unable to keep from smoothing out the skin of her inner thigh as he does, caressing her just a bit before he answers with a rasp. “It used to involve the ties from your pointe shoes.” She draws in a sharp breath, her eyes pouring into his before she nods to the dish towels binding her wrists.

“Close enough,” she breathes.

 

“Are you comfortable?” he asks her gently, running his fingers from her hip-bone to just below her breasts to a faint nod from her, eyes trained on his hand. “You know, if there’s anything you don’t like, just tell me. Or if you’re not into it anymore, any of it, just tell me and I’ll stop.”

“I know.”

“Do you want a safe word?” He can’t keep his second hand away from her, brings it up to mimic the trail of his other one.

“How rough are you gonna get?” Her ribcage rises and falls heavily under his touch.

“Not very, I don‘t think,” he muses. “But if I go a bit overboard, just say... _cherries._ ”

“Creative,” she chuckles, the sexual tension paused for a moment, pushed aside for silliness.

“Shhh,” he chides her softly and takes his hands off of her to strip out of his shirt. “I’m gonna put this on you now.” She nods and the look she gives him just before he blindfolds her with his black sleep shirt, is so full of trust and anticipation, he finds it hard to breathe.

 

And then he finds he doesn’t know where to start. Now that she is tied at her wrists and deprived of her eyesight, her legs already open for him, he is at a loss of what to do first. He sits there and ponders. Until it hits him. He’s just gonna start at the beginning. He shuffles down, running his fingers down her body so she knows where he’s going. Once he’s down, he lifts her right leg, holds it as steady as his shaking hands can manage and puts his lips to the sole of her foot. 

 

There’s tension running through it as her toes wiggle and he grins and kisses the skin, from the bottom, around to the top, to her ankles and up. Up. And up to her knees where he lingers, feeling her shiver, which inspires him to add a lick and a nibble here or there. Her scent gets more prominent as he works his way further to where he wants to be and he has to be careful to pace himself, to not heed his pulsing body that urges him to go faster, to bury his tongue in her folds. The way she squirms helps. Because he thinks she likes how he’s building her up and that gives him the grace to be patient. He licks more as he reaches her inner thigh and she breathes harsher, the first little sounds breaking from her throat. He hears the bedposts creak with her struggling against the restraints. _Fuck_ , that’s even hotter than he thought it was going to be.

 

He’s almost there. He can turn his face now, brush his nose against her skin and there she is. She’s so wet, her skin glistens in the morning light, enticing and beckoning, and he can’t wait anymore. He dives in, nose first, tongue second, works her open with his fingers, mapping her out, lingers where it makes her shake, goes in harder when her hips buck up and she’s whimpering. She tastes like sin. He fucking loves it. He loves it so much he growls, pushes her down with his palm flat on her lower abdomen and eats her out with vigour.

“Scott,” she cries above him, making him groan and rut his dick against the mattress. To think that she can’t move her arms, can’t see a thing, only feel him move about her body as he pleases is turning him on beyond measure. The idea that he can surprise her with every flick of his tongue, every brush of his fingertips, it’s driving him out of his mind.

 

“Want you,” he huffs.

“Hnnnghh,” is her reply. He likes that very much. (The fact that he gets to do this after all these years is blowing his brains out. How did he ever get to be so lucky?!) 

 

He wants to fuck her so badly already but he reminds himself to be slow, to get her really ready, to make this worth her while. Her trust in him to let him tie her up is so amazing, he wants her to get absolutely everything out of it that he can give her. He gives her another hard lick that makes her voice drop into her belly and he has to hold on to her waist for a second because he blacks out from the sound, just a little. He puts more kisses on her stomach as soon as he’s got himself back under control. 

 

Tessa keens when he catches her belly button piercing between his teeth and pulls it in, ever so gently and he’s loathe to move on but there are still so many more centimeters of skin of hers to kiss and lavish with attention. He can’t wait to swivel his tongue around her nipples, making them hard, nibbling a little and when he kisses her neck, he tastes coconut. When he kisses her mouth, he tastes pure joy. 

 

“I love you so much,” he whispers after he bites at her bottom lip. “I want you, fuck, T, I want to be with you all the time. You’re mine, okay? All mine.” He knows he talks too much, knows the things he whispers to her are lewd and vulgar and that it’s probably embarrassing half the time but he can’t stop. He needs to tell her all of it, needs her to know he’s crazy about her. He tries to tell her, goes on speaking but uses his body to convey his feelings as well. 

 

He’s rock hard in his boxer briefs, can feel how damp they are before he pushes his hips against hers, grinding his length into her wetness. He’s teasing her but he’s teasing himself as well. They moan together then, one at a time and sometimes wonderfully together. He could do this all his life. As long as he can last without coming. The longer he can be with her, the better. All he wants is to be inside her, move with her and be around her, always around and all over. He just needs to last and he’s trying hard to.

 

He tries so hard, even when he finally gets rid of the last barrier, casts his underwear off the side of the bed and sinks into her heat to the hilt, he holds back. He thrusts into her slow and steadily, works one hand down to where they’re joined and tries around her flesh for the right spot to apply the gentlest pressure and keeps moving, setting a leisurely pace. She gets more animated, so he keeps at it, clenching his ass tight to rein himself in. He could come right now, could’ve come easily ten minutes ago but this isn’t for him, it’s for her. 

 

(And it’s his fantasy, this is his _number one_ fantasy for exactly that reason. He never wanted to tie her up to have control over her, he wanted it so she could not try and reciprocate, so she can’t refuse all his attention and all his time and all the ways he wants to give her pleasure to give him his. He can’t believe he gets to do that now.)

 

He pulls out only to push back in, the way she likes it, and keeps his thumb busy on her and everytime he moves in, he rolls his hips, to hit the right angle, slowly, slowly, filling her as best as he can, on his knees with her ass lifted off the mattress because she keeps rising to meet him. It’s so good. He has to watch himself carefully now, he’s so close. To steady his body, he moves his hand from the apex of her thighs to her chest and massages her breasts, one at a time. It’s calming, makes him last longer. He could go on longer, when— 

 

“Fuck, baby, stop,” she yelps and Scott immediately leaves her be, scooting back, gently letting her hips down.

“Sorry!” he hurries. “Was that bad?”

“No. Not at all,” Tessa says before he’s even stopped speaking. “Just a bit overwhelming. _Good_ overwhelming. I just need to breathe for a second.” _Thank God._ “And I think I’d like to see you.”

“Of course,” he says. Whatever she wants. He plucks the shirt off of her face and she blinks a couple of times to adjust her eyes to the bright daylight. 

 

Once she has, she smiles softly at him, like she’s never seen anything quite as precious as him. He’ll never get used to her looking at him like that. The first time she had, so freely without fear of being found out by him, when the TV show had made it possible for her to show what affection she felt for him without fear, his heart had stopped beating for a while. It still sputters now.

“Can you come up here?” she asks, her hands clasped around the bedrods. Scott doesn’t wait to move between her legs again, perking up to kiss her but she shakes her head.

“No,” she murmurs. “I want you in my mouth.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” he gasps, his dick twitching, very much up for _that._ “Yeah, fuck yes.” It takes a while and some awkward repositioning until he can oblige her but, God, once he does, she ruins him.

 

“Shit. Fuck, T, that was amazing,” he says, a while later, knees back between her thighs, hovering above her, glancing down to see the splatter of white he just put on her chest and belly. “Was that okay for you?”

“More than okay,” she answers as he cleans her up with his shirt and then undoes her ties. “We can do that again.”

“Definitely,” he agrees, his body still radiating from that orgasm he just barely survived without getting a heart attack. “I just need a minute here, ‘cause I’m pretty sure I’m partially brain-dead right now. But tell me your thing, I wanna do your thing next.”

 

“Or we can do your thing again,” Tessa says, rubbing her wrists as he flops down next to her, in that voice that tells of how she would like to move on from the topic of her desires. Now that she is unbound, she is back to putting her needs beneath his again.

 

“ _Or_ you can tell me your thing,” Scott says and grabs her hand from between them, interlacing their fingers.

“Scott,” she whines, like he knew she would.

“Come on, T...I told you mine,” he presses. “And it was fun, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So tell me yours,” he says.

“Mine’s embarrassing,” she tells him and ain’t that interesting.

“Don’t care,” he says. “Tell me. Tellmetellmetellmetellme!”

“Sco-ott!”

“Don’t be a wuss, Tess, just tell me,” he keeps needling her. “What dirty thing do you wanna do to me? The time to be shy is seriously over, you know? I just fucking came on your tits.”

“I don’t—”

 

“Tell me!” he urges, one last time...and she bursts.

“I always wanted you to be my dance teacher,” she blurts, too loudly for the quiet morning. “Like...in the fantasy. I wanted you to be coaching me, like you did at the rink, just not on the ice but like...for ballet. And you’d be my very strict dance teacher and you’d seduce me. That’s what I used to imagine when I…”

“When you?” he whispers, curious, his body responding despite not being quite ready for it yet. It stings a little.

“You know,” Tessa mutters sheepishly. “When I touched myself.” It stings a little more.

“ _Jesus Christ._ ”

“I told you it’s embarrassing,” she says, sounding mortified and struggles to get her hand back from him, probably to smack it over her face along with her other one but he’s not letting her go.

 

“It’s really, _really_ not,” he sighs and rolls on his side, now letting her hand go so he can have it free to run his knuckles over her creamy, naked skin. “When was this? When you used to do that?”

“Way too early to tell you,” she says under her breath, her eyes rolling back into her head for a minute from his touch and he knows she came, once, maybe twice, but Tessa can outlast anybody. She doesn’t tire of him, which is enough to make him sing ‘Hallelujah’ in the back of his head. 

“Don’t tease me, babe,” he smiles, grazing her breast, trying to persuade her, hands and words in tandem.

 

“I don’t know,” she groans, in that way she does when she’s going to give him what she wants. “Probably started when I was fifteen or sixteen. Went through a couple reiterations. It varied.”

“What varied?”

“What kind of dance it was,” she says. “What I was wearing. How strict you were. How long it took until you managed to seduce me.” 

This is so hot, he can hardly breathe deep enough to get the oxygen he desperately needs into his brain. “Were you hard to get?”

“Most of the time,” she allows. He wants to jump out of his skin and become hers.

 

“So do you want to...role play that?” he hopes to God she will say yes. But instead she turns around to bury her head between his shoulder and the mattress.

“Isn’t that silly?” she mumbles into the downs of the pillows. “Like...acting all dramatic and weird?”

He laughs. “I’m a retired ice dancer, there’s no acting dramatically too weird for me.” He kisses the top of her head, her hair crinkling beneath his lips. “I’m up for it. I can role play.”

“I don’t know,” she’s wavering. But in his direction, he can tell. 

 

“I could be your strict teacher, see?” he nudges her shoulder so she’s back on her back and he gets close, into her space, making his face hard and jaw clenched. “Miss Virtue, you’re late for class again.”

“It’s private tutoring,” her voice is airy, sultry, but he’s pretty sure she’s unaware of it. “You’re taking extra time for me to make me better.”

He can work with that, too. “You’re late for our special secret one-on-one dance lessons. Ungrateful, much?” he grins and then drops the dramatics. “Honestly, I wanna do it. Let’s just play a bit.”

Tessa touches her fingertips to his lips. He’s got her. 

 

Twenty minutes later, Tessa comes into the living room, where Scott has put the couch to the side and put a chair in the middle of the free space to serve as her barre. They’ve put some effort into it, too. He’s wearing a black tank and his grey sweatpants, one leg rolled up to look dancey and she walks in with black tights, a spaghetti-strap top, and a sheer skirt which he’s pretty sure is the kitchen curtains tied around her waist. He can feel his face split into a grin, feels the fondness on his features, and then remembers he’s supposed to get in character. To be strict and cocky. It’s difficult. Acting like he isn’t a desperate fool in love with her. But it’s her fantasy and he’s fucking into it. So he clenches his jaw and gets into character.

 

“Look who decided to show up,” he snickers, leaning against the backrest of the couch, watching her understand how he’s setting the scene.

“I’m sorry,” she says, looking aptly apologetic.

“I’m sorry, _what_?” he says, hoping that she gets what he wants. “Where’s the respect for your elders, Miss Virtue?”

“I’m sorry, sir,” she amends, getting it, getting it _so good_ , it rips through him. He pulls in a sharp breath to keep from throwing the game before they’ve fully started.

 

“That’s more like it,” he rasps. “So do you have an excuse for making me wait?”

“No, I was...tardy,” she admits and casts her eyes down. “I have no excuse, sir.”

“Well, then that’s less warm-up time for you,” he snears, mindful to make it especially unsympathetic. And then he has a thought. “So, get on it. Stretch, _ma petite jolie_.”

“Sir!” She’s scandalised. It’s perfect. 

 

“I’m sorry, was that inappropriate?” he mock-asks. “Do you not like it when I call you that? When we both know why you’re here? Why you keep coming back?” He’s decided that Dance-Coach-Scott and Ballerina-Tessa have gotten down and dirty before. “Why I know you’re late? Because you stood under the shower for me and scrubbed yourself down, so you’re all pink and soft for me when I go down on you? We both know you’re the best dancer in class, I’m not doing you any favours here...not for dancing at least.” They’ve done this a lot, their characters, he’s sure of it...and he also thinks the French pet names are a nice touch and were pretty creative thinking on his part. “So, come on, _jolie_ , stretch.”

 

“Fuck, Scott,” she exhales hotly and maybe she agrees on the French. This is already going great.

“That’s _sir_ for you, Miss Virtue. And I don’t appreciate your vulgarity,” his words are as sharp as his dick is hard as a rock again, straining the fabric of his underwear, tenting his sweatpants. “First position.” He needs to get this started, impatient to get his hands on her, and pushes himself into the space to watch Tessa put her heels together closely, observe how she is turns out, from her toes all the way to her inner thighs. She’s got marvelous posture. 

 

“Elongate,” he orders, moving in to run the back of his hand up and down her neck gently. “A little further.” She exposes more of her beautiful skin to him, still fragrant and tantalizing. It was nearly perfect before and now it’s divine, how she stands before him, all straight and graceful. He wants to maul at her neck like an animal but it’s not the time yet. “Hmm, like that,” he says instead and steps away from her to do some more actual coaching like she wanted. Which is going to require every piece of ballet knowledge he can scrape from his horny, one-track mind. 

 

“One hand on the barre now.” Tessa does what he asks, ready to work, even if this is a sex game, that’s just how she’s wired. He’ll love her for that forever. “Demi Plié, lift up, grande plie and up,” he watches her go through the movement, her turnout magnificent and honestly, it’s so like her to have this in her fantasy, someone being strict with her over something she is pretty much already flawless at, incorrigible perfectionist that she is. “Two more. Heels down, Miss Virtue. Tendu to fifth.” 

 

She follows. “Port de bras,” he tells her and she leans forward, then bends down and moves her arms gracefully in time with the movement. “Good. Up.” When she’s halfway back standing, he puts his hand on her back so it’s parallel to the ground. “Hold it there. Straight back.” He lets go off her. “And stretch toward the barre. Yes, into that. Down again. And one more time, stretch towards the barre.” 

 

She does as she’s told and he watches her upper body arch toward the backrest of the chair she’s holding onto, her arm following the curve of her body. She’s a ballerina still, even after all these years. Even if, yeah, he can critique a few little things here and there. But that’s the same with the kids he coaches, no matter how long they’d been at it, there are always notes to give.

“Keep your hip forward,” he says and steps behind her, two hands on her pelvis, left and right to tilt it. “Right there. You feel that?” He’s not talking about the stretch but about his hard-on pressed against her ass. “Hmm, now back into first.” She straightens. “Right foot devant dégagé. Four times.” Tessa’s execution, moving her leg forward just above the ground and pointing her toes, is exquisite and her muscles are shivering with every move, making him pull her tighter into his front. _Fuck._

 

“I wanna feel that here,” he chokes out, trying to ride the line between blatantly sexual and keeping the story alive, it’s difficult. “Core pulled tight. Yes. Right foot to the side now.” Her ass is rubbing so deliciously against his dick, he has trouble staying upright. “ _Yes._ ” He wants her right now but he needs to be patient, still. “To the back. With me,” he whispers close to her ear and holds on to her hips as he extends his leg backwards along with her. “Abs engaged, Miss Virtue. Dégagé. Forward again. Squeeze here.” Dropping his voice even further, he reaches around her, hand on her leg. “Inside of your thighs, I want you tight right here.” 

 

Under his hand, she clenches her muscles. “Good. Now let’s see how high we can get your leg. Arabesque avant.” He sidesteps her a little, so she can unfold into a perfect arabesque if he’s ever seen one and he knows that she can do it because he’s been to a million of her recitals but he hadn’t known that she was still this good at it after years away from the barre. The move is near flawless, except for: “Mind your arms, Tess.” And, oh crap, there went his character for a second. The slip has him clear his throat and course-correct awkwardly. “Miss Virtue. Arms. Arabesque devant.” She adjusts her arms to cater to his wishes. “Hold.”

 

Scott wraps his arm around her leg, stretches her. _Hmm, just like that._ “Hold.” He pulls at her. “Hook your leg around me.” Inching his face closer to hers, he runs his hand from her thigh to her chest, nearly ripping her against him, breathes hard, swallows, whispers in her ear because he can’t stop himself: “I wanna be inside you so bad, baby girl.” She shudders in his grip so much he just _has_ to bite her earlobe and suck it into his mouth until she whimpers, still in arabesque, her ass still brushing his ridiculously throbbing cock. “You feel me? How hard I am for you? My tiny dancer. Hm?” 

 

With a growl, he grinds against her, sets her foot down again, tries to keep it together. “First position. Left foot forward. Tendu and point. Again, tendu and point. Let me feel you.” God, fucking hell, if this was real, he’d be fucking her against the studio’s mirror already, propped up on the bar. “Port de bras. Bend over for me, baby.”

 

Tessa moans as she goes down and he laughs, throaty and hungry. “You like that, pet?” Another grind into her. “You like your lessons with me?”

“Sir…,” she whimpers, making it impossible to keep from grabbing her by the shoulder and pulls her up, pressing up to her until she is flush against him, back to front, his chest to her spine, his one arm holding her tight around her stomach, the other loose around her shoulder and neck. 

“Do you like it when I teach you?” he growls to an unintelligible, gurgling response. “Answer me, _petite_.”

“Yes, sir,” she moans.

“Do you like it when I’m so fucking crazy for you?” He closes his fingers around her throat just a little.

“Yes, sir,” her voice comes out distressed from the light pressure he exerts on her windpipe.

 

“Do you want me to help take those tights off?”

“Yes, sir,” her voice is high and strained. And so fucking sexy, he’s near keeling over. He would if he wasn’t holding onto her for dear life. But he has to, he has to get her naked.

“First, Miss Virtue. Cleaner turnout, from the hips,” he tells her, sinking to his knees behind her. “Thank you.” One at a time, he gets her tights off, making her point to get them off her feet. “Such a good girl.” She purrs, literally purrs above him. 

 

“Attitude devant,” his voice barely caries, deprived as it is of air. “Put your foot on my shoulder.” As she does, he runs his hand up her legs slowly, hooks it in the crook of her knee and bends it so her hips come closer, almost into his face. It’s the best sense of deja vu. “Ma belle, ma petite ballerine. You want my mouth?” He feels her nod reverberate through her body. “I can’t hear you, kiddo.”

The ‘kiddo’ was a slip, a private, personal thing. Another relic from their teenage years, when Scott thought he was a lot more mature and grown up with the two years he has on her. 

 

“Fuck. Yes. Please,” she huffs each word like a gunshot and so she doesn’t seem to mind him calling her that.

“What do we say?” He hisses.

“Sir, _please_ ,” she corrects herself dutifully. “I need you.”

He does his thing on his knees on the floor under her, revelling in her until her sighs and moans fill the living room and her knees give way and he turns the chair they used as a barre over for her to sit on. With a distinct pull, he gets her on the edge of her seat and continues with his explorations until he can tell from her writhing and her fingernails on his scalp that she’s close—and stops. Her eyes fly open, cast down at his in irritation but he just grins.

 

“You’ve been very easy to crack today, Miss Virtue,” he tells her.

“Fine, yeah, you win,” she huffs, instantly frustrated. “Just don’t fucking stop.”

“Language,” he warns, taking her hand. “C’mere. _Petite belle_. Lie down for me.” After she has heeded his directions, her back on the walnut floorboards, he hikes her leg up, holds on to her knee and tucks it between her bodies, before he starts teasing her again. Right until she can’t take it anymore.

 

“Please, sir,” she whimpers. He _loves_ it, uses his hand to build her up, and when she starts shaking again, like she’s once more close to coming, he stops, kisses her hard for a long time, like he could live by her lips alone. His own body tingles and shivers from his head to his toes, cowering above her with his fingers dancing on her skin and bolts of electricity coursing through his veins. He’s so fucking turned on by her pleading tone, it makes it hard to hold on to the act.

“ _Scott_ ,” she squirms eventually.

“No Scotts here, only sirs,” he hums.

 

“Just fuck me,” she pushes, pulling at his hair, scratching his arms and back, and this is why it was easier doing this with her while her arms were tied. He doesn’t move and she knows why. “Just fuck me, _sir._ Please, please just…” 

He kisses her again hard, cutting her off. “So fucking hot when you beg me. So eager, babe. So beautiful.” Once more he crashes his lips down on hers before he lets go of her, puts her deg down so both her feet are on the ground, with her knees in the air while he sits up to shove his pants and underwear down...and then he fucks her into the floor, pulling out all the stops. She doesn’t last long. Because he goddamn seduced her good. Like she wanted him to.

 

He thinks she might still be shaking from aftershocks when he gathers her up from the floor and lifts her up to carry her back into the bedroom like a bride. It takes her a while of breathing deeply in his arms under the blankets until he thinks he can get through to her, until he’s calmed down himself too for that matter. He didn’t come yet, so he’s still a live wire but that’s so not what this is about right now.

“Did I do okay?” he asks, hopeful for some good feedback. “Was that what you imagined?”

 

“Jesus. Christ.” she groans.

“I went a bit overboard with the _sir_ , maybe?” This is what worries him, even past the haze.

“No. It was perfect, and the _French_ , good God,” she’s still short of breath. “Seventeen year old me is having a victory party right now.”

“Shit, Tess, if I’d known you were fantasising about this then, I don’t know if I could’ve stayed away from you,” he tells her, wrapping his arms closer around her, breathing in the scent of her hair. And that mix of coconut and sex and sweat. He’s so hard still, he doesn’t know how his body is still able to keep this up, only that he doesn’t think he’ll ever not want Tessa, ever.

 

“Did you ever fantasise about me?” she asks. “Like that?”

“All the time,” he doesn’t even wait a blink to answer her, he’s bare and open now. He always is after they make love. “If not _exactly_ like that. But I wanted to...you know, touch you. Make you mine.” He pushes his pelvis against her thighs, so she feels him, still ready for her. “Hear you beg a little. Just the thought of that now...makes me wanna go again in the shower. I fucking loved that just now.”

“Me too,” she smiles, he feels it against his chest. The smile first, the kiss next.

 

“I fucking love _you_ ,” he confesses, for the millionth time, tangling his fingers into her hair and pulling.

“I love you, too,” she says coming up from her hiding place. “So shower? And next time, I’ll tie _you_ up?”

“If you’ve not killed me before,” he puffs out list last breath, from the feel of it. The mental image of her tying him up alone is nearly enough to get him to pop. “ _God dammit, woman._ ” 

 

 

Two days later, they are packing to go back to London to go meet the new Moir baby when Danny calls and tells them it was a false alarm and that his Tessa has been sent back home to wait for actual labour to start. Which means another fun night at the lake cottage. The morning after, they head out for Toronto at first light, trading off driving duty halfway down the highway. The baby is still not coming, probably deciding to give his parents the night to watch his uncle live on national television.

 

At midday, they arrive at _The Rebel_ , the entertainment venue where the finale is broadcasted from, to fans already loitering around the stage door. When Tessa and Scott walk from the parking lot to the back entrance, they’re immediately crowded. Scott handles it as best as he can, knowing that Tess tenses up when this happens, the attention overwhelming her. Shoving her discreetly behind his body, Scott smiles and chats with the people, signing autographs and taking selfies until finally, a security guard decides to do his job and ushers them inside.

 

They’re met by a grinning, already dressed-to-the-nines Luke, who inquires how they are and how they’ve spent their time off. Scott tells him honestly that they hid out at the cottage but mentions that Tessa hogged the master bedroom for herself and he had to retire to the kids’ bunk beds, just to be safe. Luke doesn’t seem suspicious, which is fortunate. Next they go through hair and makeup, reuniting with a beaming Kelly in their dressing room. 

 

Once they’re done and on their own again, Tessa steps up to him, catching his eye in their reflection from the full-length mirror. Their clothes match subtly, as they were bound to because Tess picked out the outfits. He likes it, more than is probably considered cool for a guy, but there is something about looking like a unit, like he’s the other half of Tessa that tugs at his heart, warming his body from the inside. 

“They’re all gonna hate us by the end of the night,” Tess mutters, leaning against his shoulder.

 

“Yeah,” he nods, feeling a familiar rumble low in his belly, foreboding and uneasy. “You ready for that?”

“For a million dollars I’m just about ready for anything,” Tess quips but he can tell from the determined look in her eyes that she’s completely serious.

“Fair enough,” he shrugs. After all, they’re so close to winning and he _so_ needs the money. “So we’re doing this?”

“In if you’re in,” she tells him earnestly, her fingers closing around his.

“In,” he replies.

“Then it’s showtime,” she declares and squeezes his hand, just once. There’s no time to linger, they’ve got their old and remaining competitors to meet again and rehearsals to run.

 

It’s hugs all around when a new PA leads Tessa and Scott to the large backstage lounge where Justin and Jeffrey, Kaitlyn and Andrew, Shana and Deric, Carly and Jim, and Bonnie and Kitty are. Obviously, the kids from London are the last couple to arrive. The others don’t seem to mind though, there is happy chatter, everybody catching everybody up on what they’ve done since they all last saw each other but Scott feels the undercurrent of tension, especially radiating from Kaitlyn and Andrew. He’s pretty sure that they will be the ones to beat that night and they seem to think so too.

 

His suspicions turn out right, hours later, when the first moving graphs of the televote show that Justin and Jeffrey are the lovers that Canada does not believe are the real deal, mostly, probably, because of what Kaitlyn said in the last evaluation in episode four. Scott hadn’t watched the episode but Tessa had and told him about what bits and pieces made it into the final shot. Apparently, he and Tess came off quite well after all. The stage light hammering down on them hot and relentless, Scott tries to control his features when Hunter says an emotional goodbye to J and J and the two men come over to hug the final two couples. He’s sad that their shot at the win is over but then of course, he’s giddy and bursting with adrenaline for having made it to the final two. 

 

He’s barely able to process the studio atmosphere, the audience reactions or the cameras filming his every move, because he’s so nervous as they’re setting up the games he and Tess are going to have to beat Kaitlyn and Andrew at. As the lights are being reset slightly during the commercial break, Scott glances from the crowd to the special stands right of the stage where the other couples sit, and to the left of the stage Marie-France and Patrice are lounging together with the families from the baby-sitting challenge. Everybody is there, everybody is beaming. Next to him, Tessa is in the zone. It takes just a second of looking at her to know that she is ready to kill each and every challenge that will be put in front of them. 

 

The challenges are, in order: a timed IKEA-furniture assembly contest (that Kaitlyn and Andrew win by a hair), a three-round-couple’s quiz (that Tessa and Scott win two to one), and a sports parkour that goes to Kait and Andrew on a mere technicality, Scott believes. But it is what it is. He thinks they can still win it, even when Tessa beside him has her jaw squared and her ice-smile on. Still dressed in the sports wear for the parkour, they’re standing next to Hunter, who is wedged in between the two remaining couples as the audience animators on each sides of the stage conduct the studio crowd into clapping and cheering for them.

 

“So by points,” Hunter declares as the noise dies out, stopped short by the animators waving their hands sharply. “Kaitlyn and Andrew are in the lead by one point which they are going to take into the voting count as 20%, where Tessa and Scott start out at ten. The lines have been open since the beginning of the show and will be for another ten minutes to see what Canada has to say about those percentages. We’ll be back after the break to find out...what love’s got to do with it!”

 

After the break, they make time for the voting and also to create tension, by interviewing the couples that have been eliminated before, the babysitting-challenge couples, and Marie-France and Patrice. They all say a whole bunch of nothing but Scott supposes that saying anything of substance right now is not encouraged. The audience is supposed to have made up their own minds by now. (And to be glued to their TV sets, so the ratings stay as impressive as they’ve been so far.)

 

Finally, after changing back into their matching show-clothes, Tessa and Scott are back on stage with Hunter and Kaitlyn and Andrew. Their host beams at the camera trained on his face again: “The suspense is killing me, it’s killing us all, isn’t it? Lines are open for thirty more seconds, call in, text in, and then we’re counting down, alright?” He moves about, engaging the audience to count with him. “Ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one…and the lines are closed. The voting is over! Canada has chosen its sweethearts.”

 

While the votes are being run through the computers for the final count, the pop-rock band who wrote the show’s theme plays it live and Scott stays close to Tessa, trying to calm his nerves. They’re so close now. Nothing is in their hands anymore. They’ve done their best, did their job, and now all they can do is wait for the verdict of the Canadian people. There’s maybe two minutes between them and finding out if they’ve won a million dollars.

 

And then the moment is there. “I am just hearing now that the votes are all counted,” Hunter announces and then turns to the couples at either side of him. “Are you ready to learn whose love story has made Canada believe in true romance most?” Scott finds himself nodding dumbly, in sync with Tessa tucked under his arm. “Are you ready?” Hunter encourages the roaring audience reaction. “Let’s have a look at the numbers!”

 

They all turn around to have a look at the giant LED screen beside them that shows two graphs rising, both equally for a while, until one takes the lead while the other stops and keeps rising and rising and rising, until it’s clear that whoever won, did so by a landslide.

“Oh, as you can see we got quite a gap there,” Hunter notes, turning back to face the crowd and the cameras. “In just a few short seconds, we will know who has won _What’s Love Got To Do With It?!_ ” 

 

The fifteen second commercial they play to keep the suspense alive is the longest fifteen seconds of Scott’s life so far. He knows how his face must look, feels it set into tension, his brow furrowed, his eyes slits, studying one of the replay-screens facing the stage, the one that shows the graphs where soon, a set of names will appear under each vertical line. Tess is frozen stiff in his arms and he can’t really say if she’s breathing or not, so he drops a kiss on her head to steady her, never taking his eyes off the screen. Hunter is saying something but Scott’s not listening. He just wants to know. 

 

And then he does. He blinks once and as he opens his eyes again, the crowd erupts. There, under the bigger graph, it says ‘ _Tessa and Scott._ ’ And that’s it. They won. He yells in triumph, scatters forward a little to throw his fist up and then snaps right around to grapple for Tessa. He’s hugging her tight, lifting her up off her feet, shaking her. 

“We did it, we did it,” he nearly yells in her ear and holds her as tight as he can, as tight as she holds him. The noise of the studio disappears when she laughs into his neck, loud and roaring, like she had when she was just a little girl.

 

 

“Canada, you have chosen!” Hunter blares and Scott feels a hand patting his back, letting him know to set Tessa down and turn her back out to the audience, her mascara a little smeared, so he bends down to smooth it out as much as he can. “Tessa and Scott, you are the winners of _What’s Love Got To Do With It?!_ What do you say?”

“This is incredible!” Scott blurts and Tessa offers: “I can’t believe it!”

The cheers are so loud, Scott half wants to cover his ears. 

 

_500,000 dollars for him. Holy shit. Holy fucking shit._

 

“But now the big question still hasn’t been answered yet, has it?” Hunter goes on, looking at the camera and then at Scott. “The big question of who the fake couple is.”

“We sure can’t wait to find out,” Scott replies, like he was told to in rehearsal. Whoever was going to end up the winner, was supposed to say it, and he’s very proud of himself that he remembered, even past the rush of success, of knowing that now all his debt will be paid in full, that he’ll be able to finish the renovations on his house. And also past the pervasive little voice in the back of his head that tells him how he and Tessa will now have to figure out a way to convince the nation that they are _not_ a couple, when they had just tried for a month and succeeded at convincing everybody and their Moms (literally) that they were.

 

There’s little time to work through the triumph or the musings attached to it, not even time to devote more attention to Tessa, who’s just radiant on his arm. Before he knows it, they’re standing in a line-up on the stage, couple next to couple next to couple. Each couple under one moving head spotlight, drenched in white, bright lighting.

“You have watched them for four weeks, they watched each other, we all tried to figure out how to tell real love from pretend affection, now we are gonna find out, if we were right...or not,” Hunter announces. “The fake couple on this first season of _What’s Love Got To Do With It?!_ is…” 

 

In true TV show-fashion, the lights overhead start flickering, over every couple until it’s clear that the lights run over all of them, one by one, rushing down the line-up. Who could it be? Is it Jeff and Justin? Kaitlyn and Andrew after all? Or could it be Bonnie and Kitty? Was it Shana and Deric? Or the first couple to leave...Carlie and Jim? Surely, it couldn’t be the winners, surely, it’s not Tessa and Scott. 

 

The lights flicker faster, running, running, into a frenzy. Until Scott is blinded, holding onto his best friend as the light stops on them, drowning them in revelation. Now everyone knows.

 

For a long moment, there is complete silence in the studio, the only sound is the slight buzzing of the lights overhead and the rustle of technicians operating the cameras. But then...then the dam bursts, the exact second someone in the back mutters a disturbed “No” that carries through the entire studio. Its end is drowned out by the audience chiming in. There is actually screaming. No one boos, but Scott thinks they’re not far off. There’s too much stuff happening to process it, it all sounds like mayhem and the few glares he catches look like it, too. Beside them, Hunter is already trying to reel the audience in, to swiftly lead into the intro of their revised home story, the one where they reveal that they’re not together, the one that shows Scott sitting beside her in her apartment saying “We’re best friends but we’re not together. It’s not like that between us.”

 

Someone in the stands left of them literally wails. Scott wants to take Tessa’s hand, is aching to. But he can’t anymore, not out here. Out here, it’s not _like that_ between them. The people look at them like they’ve just burned a bunch of Canadian flags on stage, like they’ve betrayed them and set their dreams on fire. _God fucking dammit._

 

What have they gotten themselves into?

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For everybody who is not into angst, this would be a good, fun place to stop reading :) Because you already know our babies have seen nothing yet and life is going to get a little more (read: a whole lot more) complicated than it has been before.
> 
> So for everyone who leaves us here, thank you and I hope you had a good time <3
> 
> To everyone, staying or leaving, I hope the dirty bits weren't too graphic and you can look at ballet the same after this ;)
> 
> Thank you ever so much for all of your support, I am so grateful!
> 
> (So, who's happy we're in Scott's head now, btw? I am excited!)


	10. Second Hand Emotion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello folks, sorry for the long wait. I have been battling this chapter with moderate success. But here it is, I hope you don't entirely hate it.
> 
> Thanks as always to KIM, KEL and FAIRWINDS for being awesome and a shoutout to my name-twin for going over this once more with me, too!
> 
> AND GIANT THANKS TO TALIA! Who made the awesome cover and magazine layout you will see at the end of this chapter <3

****Hunter and the PAs in the studio manage to rein in the crowd over the duration of their homestory, the big reveal of “How we did it, how we fooled the world into believing we love each other,” and Scott barely resists the urge to wrap his arms around Tessa and hide in her hair. It’s not a nice thing to be revealed as a liar, he thinks, especially when the reaction is as visceral as it is. It’s not so much that people seem angry, they look sad. There have been folks with signs spelling their names, adorned with pictures and hearts. Now they’re gone, cardboard crumpled between people’s feet. When Hunter finishes the show, congratulating them once more on their phenomenal win and asks them what they’re planning to do with the money (“Pay my bills,” says Tessa. “Finish the renovations on my house,” says Scott), the audience claps politely but as taping ends, so does the noise.

 

Rani, hurrying from the camera pit in front of the stage, comes rushing up to take them all backstage, looking a bit shaken and uncomfortable.

“That was awkward, eh?” she says and Scott can tell she is trying to ease the tension but it’s not working all that well. She backs away quickly again, leaving Tessa, Kaitlyn, Andrew and him behind the stage set, looking at each other while outside the sounds of muted chatter and footsteps permeate the air.

 

“Wow,” Kaitlyn says finally, breaking an uneasy silence.

“Yeah,” says Scott, toneless. 

“So it was you all along,” Kaitlyn exclaims needlessly. “That’s crazy.”

“Yeah,” Scott repeats, not really knowing what else to say to her. He finds himself stepping away from a motionless Tessa beside him, even if he wants to do the opposite.

“I was so sure that you guys were legit,” Kaitlyn is shaking her head in disbelief. “I thought we’d at least get 100,000 dollars out of today. Wow.” 

“I’m sorry,” Tessa says, like a true Canadian.

“Don’t be,” Andrew hurries and takes Tessa’s hand to squeeze it. “That’s the game, isn’t it? Congrats, guys.”

“Congratulations on your win, you truly fooled everybody,” Kaitlyn chimes in and Scott can’t help but identify her tone as catty. He sees Tessa register the tone and crumble slightly. She ducks out, away from Andrews grip, and mumbles something about having to go to the toilet. And leaves Scott there by himself. Kaitlyn shrugs and bids her farewell, too. She’s not exactly icy to him but her temporary bye isn’t cozy either.

 

Andrew, meanwhile, looks like a dog with a bone. “But seriously, you’re not...you know,” he begins, leaning into Scott’s space, “sleeping with her?”

“No, I’m not,” he replies on reflex. He’s been training for this at their Homecoming-Party in the fire station.

“Never have?” Andrew keeps at it.

“Nope,” Scott says.

“ _Why?!_ ” And if any exclamation ever fit the term ‘incredulous’, this was it.

“Because,” Scott shrugs, trying not to sound as unnerved as he feels. “She’s my best friend and I don’t wanna ruin that.”

“Well, she definitely wants you,” Andrew shrugs. “But then again, it doesn’t matter now, does it? You just won a show by not being together. Is that in your contract, too? Not hooking up?”

“I wouldn’t know, I haven’t checked. Because it doesn’t matter,” Scott tells him, trying hard to take the edge off his voice. “‘Cause we’re just friends, you know?”

Andrew eyes him like he’s got three heads, but Scott sees Marie-France and Patrice emerge from around the corner and uses it as his cue to get away from that unpleasant line of questioning. However, he finds that seeing his ice skating heroes give him the exact looks the audience had just minutes before, a mix of puzzle- and disappointment, might not be favourable to Andrew’s prying.

 

“I am not going to lie, we were a little shocked,” Patch says after Scott asks him how it’s going, of all things.

“Oui,” Marie-France agrees with her husband. “Mais, that just goes to show how wonderful performers you are. You really sold your connection!” ‘ _Sold your connection_ ’ sounds very, very wrong in Scott’s ears but he is pretty sure that arguing against this very assumption would not benefit his and Tessa’s general case.

“It’s good to run into you,” says Patrice, catching Scott by his elbow. “Because we would really like to talk to you both about working together in the future maybe.” And Scott didn’t expect to hear _that_. He does a double-take, looking from Patch to Marie, but she is just smiling and nodding like she is completely okay with goddamn Patrice Lauzon asking a random small town skating coach to work with him. “We’ve just lost a brilliant coach to his husband moving across the country, and we were hoping you might be able to take over for him. And Marie is always looking for creative and fresh influences for choreography, which would be great for Tess. Maybe we can figure something out there.”

“Wow, okay, yeah,” Scott stammers and yeah, he just won 500,000 dollars but this might be even better. “I’ll definitely talk to Tess about it.” 

 

Only he doesn’t. 

 

When Tessa comes back, they’re rushed to the After-Show party with the production crew and in an effort to appear unattached, they spend most of it apart and then it just slips his mind. Scott tells Erica about his house, making sure to mention many times over that he’s now going to be living on the other end of town because he’s going to move out of the apartment building he shares with Tessa. He promises Greg and Andrew again that he has no romantic interest in his best friend and is mindful not to know where she is at at any point of the night (which he does anyway). At two in the morning, they find each other again, their eyes locking across a crowded dance floor. Tessa lifts her eyebrows, cocks her head to the side just a little and he knows her well enough to be able to translate it into “Let’s go home” immediately. He nods and indicates the exit. Ten minutes later, they meet at the coatroom, gather their stuff and head out to his car. This time, there are no people waiting for them. But there is a cardboard poster saying ‘Tessa and Scott 4 the Win!!’ lying on the ground as they cross the parking lot. There’s footprints covering the letters. Scott tucks at Tessa’s jacket sleeve to make her look down.

 

“They really hate us now, don’t they?” she asks him, her voice echoing down the pavement.

“I think some people were really rooting for us,” he says.

“If they only knew,” Tessa says, somewhat breezily but Scott can’t really share in her ease and honestly, doesn’t want to talk about it. So instead, he takes her hand in his after checking behind his shoulder to make sure that nobody from the party followed them out, and leads her to the car. Production had asked them if they wanted to have a hotel in Toronto but they’d declined, mostly because they wanted to sleep in the same bed instead of in two separate hotel rooms and even though Scott is tired, he gets them home to London and he’s even awake enough to listen to Tessa babble as she takes her makeup off in her room at four in the morning when the sun is already starting to rise. She’s going a million words a minute about finally being able to pay off her debt and maybe getting a new couch and taking her mother and sister to a spa or maybe the south of France for a girls trip.

 

“I can’t believe it really happened,” Scott muses once she’s finally done and climbs into bed to snuggle against his chest.

“I know,” she says, predictably. They’ve had this conversation about a million times so far since merging onto the highway home.

“And so by next week, we’ll each have half a million dollars on our accounts?” he asks, which is a first. 

“Well, minus the tax,” Tessa tells him.

“Whatever, still a fucking shitload of money,” he breathes, pulling her in closer. Her hair smells like hairspray. “I can finish renovating the house.”

“I’ll go to Paris again,” she says. “Maybe I can take you with me and hide you in my carry-on.”

“We’ll be super rich,” he reminds her, “we can charter a plane so nobody sees us.”

Tessa laughs. “Think about the taxes, chartering flights to Europe might push our budget a little anyway.”

“You’re no fun at all,” he grins, kisses the top of her head and runs his hand up and down her shirt-clad back, pondering something. “We’ll be fine with the people being all angry at us?” he asks.

“Definitely,” she decides. “They’ll be mad for a bit and then they’ll forget we exist.”

 

Tessa remains very sure of that until approximately the following day when they get a call from Luke telling them that they have a request to be on the Ellen DeGeneres Show. They’ve spent a lazy morning in bed up to that point, neither of them checking their phones. But after Tessa tells Luke that, “Sure, I guess, yeah, we’ll do it,” she does dive into their tag on social media and forgets her breakfast cereal entirely over it.

“There’s a Huffpost article about how we’re lying,” she says at one point and a few minutes later, her forehead in worried creases, she continues: “Twitter is insane, there’s a ‘vm-truther’-movement, nobody believes us. There’s so many angry emojis. They are tweeting at Ellen to break us. Maybe we should cancel that? Before Luke can tell them we’re in.”

 

“But wouldn’t that look like we got something to hide?” he challenges, his own appetite fading fast. Tessa grumbles, obviously agreeing but not wanting to.

“It’s kind of Ellen’s thing to out celebrity couples,” Tessa says, nearly unintelligible because she’s also chewing on her lip at the same time.

“We’re hardly a celebrity couple,” Scott says. “We’ll just...deny it and then people will move on, right? Like you said?” 

“Yeah,” Tessa grumbles and shoves her bowl to the side to keep on studying her phone. Breakfast is evidently over. “Oh,” she says after a while, “Danny just texted, you’re supposed to check your phone, he called you. Tessa had the baby an hour ago!”

 

For a few wonderful moments, Ellen and Twitter and gifs and HuffPost articles are forgotten when Scott darts up to the bedroom, snatches his phone from the charger and ignores all notifications except for the five missed calls of his brother and calls him back, yelling into the speaker before his brother can even get a word in. He only stops congratulating his brother and his wife on speaker long enough for Danny to ask him and Tessa to come to the hospital to meet their son. Scott agrees without even asking Tessa but the way her face brightens when he tells her, lets him know that she’s welcoming the happy news greatly. They get dressed and halfway out the door, Scott takes Tessa’s phone from her grip and pockets it, now carrying both their phones.

“Let’s not think about this stuff right now, huh?” he asks, touching his hand to the small of her back, the satin, floral fabric soft to his touch. She nods and lets him maneuver her forward. He doesn’t put his hand on her again though, not until they’re inside Tessa Moir’s hospital room, safe from inquisitive glances.

 

“You ready to meet Mason?” Danny asks as he lets Scott out of a bear hug and bows down a little to gather Scott’s Tessa into his arms and they both nod eagerly and push past him to get to Danny’s Tessa and the tiny, tiny baby she holds in her arm.

“How are you?” his Tessa asks, sitting down on the bed gingerly. “Scott said you’ve been here since yesterday.”

“Labour was a bit of a battle,” his sister in law says. “But we’re here now.”

“He’s so adorable,” Tessa coos, leaning forward so Scott has to move with her to be able to see the baby right. “He’s perfect.”

“Do you want to hold him for a second?” Danny’s Tessa asks, already holding up the child to pass him to a nodding Tessa. She’s so eager that she’s already scooped him up by the time Scott plops down on the bed next to her.

 

“There you go,” his sister in law says. “You’re doing great. Guess that baby training pays off.”

“Oh, he’s an angel, no expertise necessary,” Tessa mutters, eyes fixed on the baby and it does things to Scott, like it had when she’d carried Marnie around on the island. Except this baby is super new and a Moir, which makes the sight before him pretty much a sucker punch in the gut.

“Look at him, he’s so cute,” he breathes, leaning over Tessa’s shoulder to see the baby, breathing in the scent of her hair, her neck.

“He looks a little like you,” she says, which makes him nearly whimper. He’s not ready for kids yet but the sheer image of Tessa having a little baby that looks like him, because it’s his, is mindblowing and makes his belly feel all fuzzy. He can’t help but kiss her cheek and try to keep from making a weird snorting noise, just because he’s so happy that this is a future he can see one day.

 

“We should take the baby off of them before they decide to rush the family planning,” Danny quips behind him.

“Shut up, Dan,” Scott snaps, his nose still smushed against Tessa’s.

“Yeah, we’ve still got time for that,” Tessa says and leans out to smile down at baby Mason. “For now we’ll just practice, huh?”

Scott can’t help wiggling his eyebrows, because he’s got a dirty mind and not a very curated sense of humor. “That’s what she said,” he jokes and all the other adults in the room groan.

“Scott!” they chide in unison.

“What I’m saying is,” he hurries, sheepish, “if you ever need a babysitter, just ring us up.”

 

They spend another hour cooing at the baby until he gets fussy and Alma arrives with Charlotte in tow who she’s picked up from school. Scott says _hi_ and _bye_ to his mom, promises to bring Tessa over for dinner soon, and goes briefly through his plans to hire a contractor to finish his house within the month. Danny says he’ll help in any way he can as soon as they’ve settled in with Mason at home a little.

“Don’t worry, bro,” Scott tells him, coming out of the hug goodbye. “This is way more important than the shingles of my house.”

“But it means something to you,” Danny smiles. “So it means something to me.” He glances at Tessa as she’s chatting with their mother. “We’ve always done it like that.”

Scott grins and as if on cue, his Tessa finds him, winds her arm under his and wedges against his side. This is how it’s right, how life was always supposed to be. Surrounded by his family, with the love of his life tucked to his left. It’s a pity that he has to let go as soon as they leave the room.

 

Back at home, he keeps with the recent habit of going straight up with Tessa instead of stopping at his own apartment and then realises about ten minutes in, that he needs this or that from his place and goes to get it. When he lets himself in with the spare key she’d given him the other day, she’s waiting for him with an empty decorative box in her hands that fits exactly in her open plan shelf at the far wall of her living room. 

“This is your box now,” she declares, setting it on the couch table. “You can keep whatever you’re gonna need in here and I made room for some clothes in my drawer in the bedroom.”

“We’re at drawers already?” he asks her, his cheeks already taut from grinning.

“We’re going on eighteen years here, now,” Tessa scoffs. “I think we can skip a couple of the steps, no?”

“I’d say let’s elope tomorrow but I don’t wanna scare you,” Scott shrugs and Tessa cackles.

“I wouldn’t be scared at all, I think you would be, though,” she challenges and he is a little scared, like she knew he would be, which is why there’s a shit-eating grin on her face and a ‘got you’-look in her eyes. 

 

They stand there for a second, on the cusp on possibility but he finds that she seems comfortable there. She doesn’t wait for anything from him and that is what gives him the confidence to not make any declarations. He would, he _could_ , too, because he knows she’s it for him, no one else will ever make him feel the way she does, but they’re good as they are for now. They’re in their mid-twenties, they don’t need to get married yet. But still, between them, in that moment, a word passes, unsaid, and they both know it. _Someday._ Someday, he’ll ask her if she wants his name and his hand forever and he hopes she’ll want it then the way she seems to now. 

 

The next three days, they’re finding their footing in this new world where Tessa doesn’t have to work to afford university, which is why she’s quit waitressing and waits out the start of her next semester getting savvy at social media instead. Scott arranges for a contractor to meet him at the house, tells him what he wants done and gets an estimate of three weeks until completion and an invoice for a downpayment that has his stomach flip until he remembers that he’s a little bit rich now. They go and visit Danny’s Tessa on her last day at the hospital, buy a second set of comforters for each of their beds so that they don’t steal the blanket from each other at night and finally get that Moir family dinner in. It’s a marvellous three days altogether. So marvellous, that Scott is completely caught off guard when at the end of it, the first shoe drops.

 

“Did you see twitter?” Tessa asks him with a frown. She has just returned from her run, still in her workout clothes in his living room, like she has come straight to him.

“No,” he replies, muting the game that is on. “What about it?”

"Someone saw us at the hospital and they figured out that we went to see Tessa and Mason and obviously that’s now proof that we’re together.”

“What?” he asks, instantly alarmed. “Why?”

“Because platonic friends don’t do that, apparently,” Tessa groans and rounds the couch to flop down next to him with a frustrated grunt.

“You’d have come with me to see them anyway,” he huffs, turning to face her, hiking one leg onto the couch.

“That’s what I’m saying,” she mirrors his move, scooting closer, her hand landing on his thigh.

“But then again we weren’t that good at being platonic friends even when we were, eh?” he smiles a little, annoyed but by the looks of it, not half as annoyed as her.

“I was crap at it, honestly,” she admits and it’s very distracting how little clothing she’s wearing and how close she is now, the exertion sweat clinging to her flushed body not the least bit gross, as it maybe should be. 

“Me too,” he murmurs, rocking even closer to her, close enough that he could mouth at her shoulder, like he wants to.

 

“Anyway, I have an idea,” Tessa continues, undeterred by him in her space (if you don’t count the goosebumps that have started to show on her arms). “About how to make this go away.”

“Pray tell,” he rasps, working his hand into the strands of hair that have fallen from her bun.

“We’re gonna go on a double date,” Tessa says, or at least he thinks she does, he’s not really paying attention. She does smell fantastic. “Very publicly, like we’ll post about it."

“Huh…,” he asks, as soon as her words compute through the haze of his man brain clouding with want. _Get your head in the game Moir, at least a little._

“It’s the only thing we can do,” she shrugs, her muscles clenching under her skin, all enticing and unfairly alluring. “The only thing that’ll make people believe we’re not...you know.”

“Stupidly in love with each other?” he finishes for her and thinks he can self-reward his following her train of thought by dropping a kiss to her shoulder.

“Yes, that,” she agrees, a little out of breath. “So you agree?”

“Yeah, whatever you say,” he murmurs, kisses her again, moving higher on her neck. “Let’s double date.”

“Scott, I mean it. I’ll find us people to…,” she struggles against him and arches into his touch at the same time, which is funny, especially considering how her hand wanders from his thigh to where it’s pretty obvious she will lose him if she continues her trail. “..to take out and be seen with.”

“Sure thing,” he breathes and that’s that, her hand is on him. This conversation is over.

 

The next time he hears about double dating is when Tessa hands him his phone after a good half hour scrolling to what she tells him are his direct messages on the Instagram app and shows him the picture of a blonde, model-like girl with sharp, small features and a smile even whiter than Tessa’s. “This is Claire, she’s your date for next week,” she tells him merely as she gives his cell back.

“I can get a date on my own, you know?” he says bemusedly.

“I know,” Tessa nods, touching her fingers to his neck and once again he’s distracted. Before she kisses him, he wonders briefly if she’s doing it on purpose. It’s hard to care though when she leans in to kiss him, turning his attention wholly away from the furniture store website he’s browsing to order some living room interior for his new house. (After, she tells him her date will be some skier who’s actually sort of famous, whose actual agent reached out to Tessa for setting up a date, which Scott thinks is hilarious and embarrassing...because obviously this dude can’t get a date on his own if he asks his agent to set it up for him. Pathetic.)

 

Three days later, Scott and Tessa walk down a busy downtown London street, two feet away from each other and dressed deliberately to not match. “I’m not sure I wanna do this anymore,” he says, glancing over to her. Right now, her great plan seems more than a little insane.

“Scott,” she hisses, in time with the beat of her high heels clacking on the concrete. “You _agreed._ ”

“Well, I wasn’t exactly at full mental capacity when you suggested it,” he argues and he can tell from her smirk that she very well remembers. "I don’t want to watch some asshole flirt with you all night.”

“I’m not too keen on witnessing some leggy blonde making heart eyes on you either,” she shrugs and walks just a bit closer to him.

“Tess, _you_ chose her,” he murmurs.

“Still,” and the way she sounds all prissy and jealous brightens his mood significantly.

“Oh, this is gonna be fun, I can already tell,” he scoffs and then laughs genuinely, only barely resisting the urge to pull her in by the neck and walk the rest of the way to the restaurant with her head tucked under his arm. _Platonic_ , he thinks to himself. _Gotta look platonic._

 

The restaurant Tessa picked for their double date is one of the finest in London, if not _the_ finest. Actually, it’s about the only one you could consider high class, where usual people have to wait months for a reservation because it’s young and hip and what few ‘celebrities’ London has, here is where they eat. Tessa marches straight up to the lady at the desk in front and they’re told that one of their dates, hers for that matter, is already waiting at the bar, and so they pick him up at the way over to their table. 

 

Scott immediately wants to bolt and cancel the whole thing. Even more so when they reach Tessa’s date, smartly dressed and leaning against the bar with a swagger Scott finds arrogant and cocky, and he realises that the dude is a good head or two taller than him. He feels immediately emasculated, stunted and unattractive, and he knows it’s silly because Tessa loves him and she doesn’t really want to date this other dude but that doesn’t change anything. It doesn’t change that the guy has a chiseled jaw, can actually grow a beard, and grins down at Tessa easily in this self-satisfied, douchebag-way that always seems to work on so, so shamefully many women if the dude is even half-way good looking (and this one is more than even half-way good looking, too). 

 

“Scott, this is Ryan,” Tessa says, introducing the two as they’re being led to their table. “He skis.”

“Olympic skiing,” Ryan says, because apparently he thinks that needs further clarification and Scott tries his hardest not to scoff and occupies himself by pulling up a chair for Tessa who gives him a dirty look he can’t understand until it dawns on him that it’s a very non-platonic thing to do, pulling up someone’s chair while their actual date is standing idly by. Not that this Ryan person had made any move toward fixing her chair for her but still. Scott sits down appropriately sheepish, only to stand up again when Claire joins them (who looks pretty much exactly as good in real life as she does on her Instagram) and pulls out her chair. Tessa doesn’t seem much happier with him for that either, though.

 

“So did you find it okay?” Tessa asks across the table to Ryan, he’s sitting opposite of hers, leaned back comfortably in his chair with Claire beside him. It’s unclear who is more attractive, him or her. Tessa obviously takes the cake at the table, which means that Scott is the least handsome person in the round and he doesn’t like it much.

“Easy,” Ryan answers evenely. “I got this sweet new ride with a prime nav system.”

 

Scott’s throat is as dry as his tone. “Awesome.” So he’s got money, big deal, Scott has money too, now. Hell, Tessa has money, she doesn’t need this clown. (She doesn’t want him either, his voice of reason pipes up but the rest of him sings ‘Roxanne’ from the top of his lungs. He _hates_ the way this guy looks at his girlfriend, like he could get it. _Fuck that._ )

“This is such a nice place,” Claire says, her voice high and girlish, and reminds him that she’s there too. “I’ve always been at the bar only, though. So cool to be on the floor. I could never get a reservation in.” Tessa smiles at her like she’s not bothered at all, but Claire  ignores her, turning to him instead. “What’s your favourite drink, Scott?”

 

This is only the first of many questions Claire asks. She downright interviews him, keeps derailing the table conversation to ask him about his favourite dish or music or movies and whatever he answers, she says she likes too. Tessa tries to open it up to the four of them a couple of times but Claire isn’t having it. Until they get their drinks, she exclusively plays Q&A with Scott. Which Ryan obviously takes as his cue to chat up Tessa. Only that he doesn’t ask her about herself. He just tells her about his car and his flat, his extensive travelling and about skiing. And the Olympics. Because he did go to the Olympics...has he mentioned that? Scott occupies Claire with a question to tell him about her modelling and works his hand slyly under the tablecloth to land on Tessa’s knee while she listens to Ryan animatedly telling her about the legions of women that have propositioned him since he came back from the Games and how most of them don’t fit his high standards. Scott wishes he didn’t, but Ryan explains exhaustively what those are.

“If a girl can't cook me something, I'm just not interested, you know?” he tells her conspiratorially and under the table, Tessa’s hand finds Scott’s to squeeze. “Like, I like a girl who's comfortable in the kitchen. And someone who takes her appearance seriously. I don't know what the deal is with these girls who go out in public with no makeup, hair not done, and think that guys are going to go for that.” Scott has a hard time pretending to listen to Claire, what with how hard Tessa is squeezing. “Not hot. Not hot at all."

 

Then he goes on a tangent about needy women, says the wonderful sentence: “I am only gonna date a girl whose boobs fit perfectly in my hands when I cup them,” and makes some stupid jokes essentially designed to flatter Tessa by talking down on other women and she giggles falsely. Scott wishes he could touch her again but their food has since arrived and it would look weird to eat with only just one arm. So he is left sitting there watching Claire pick apart a spinach salad as if she was deliberating the calories on each bite and listening to Ryan entertain the girls with his insights into how the world works.

 

“Look, all I’m saying is that if women wanna be equal, they have to take a punch, you know?” he declares, sawing at his steak (the most expensive item on the menu, of course). “Not in a bad way, like don’t get me wrong. But I can get beat up at the bar and nobody cares, like a woman slaps me across the face, it’s nothing, but if I’d do the same, I’d get arrested.” Ryan actually says, with his own mouth. “It’s just a fucking double standard.” Scott looks from Claire who looks only at him, like she isn’t even listening to Ryan, or to Tessa, whose left eye twitches just ever so slightly.

“Sorry, did you really just say that in order to be equal to men, women have to get beat up in bars?” Scott asks, putting his arm around the backrest of Tessa’s chair without properly thinking about it.

“No, I just mean that if it happened, there shouldn’t be such a big deal made of it,” Ryan shrugs, like he’s actually convinced that he solved the battle of the sexes.

 

“That’s complete and utter—”

“Scott,” Tessa says quickly, warningly. _Don’t make a scene_ , her eyes stare back at his when he turns his head to look at her. Her eyes are huge but he’s heard enough for now.

“My phone is ringing,” he declares, out of thin air and produces an obviously dead phone from his pant pocket, extracting his arm from behind Tessa. “It’s Cara, it might be important,” he continues, speaking just to her. “Because of the thing, T. We better take this together.” And with that he gets up and starts walking away from the table. He doesn’t stop to see if she’s coming, he knows she will.

“Excuse us for a second,” he can hear her tell their dates behind him and then her chair scrapes over the expensive hardwood floor. “It’s business.”

 

Scott ducks down the stairs to where the ‘Restroom’ signs point, but passes right by as soon as they come upon them, Tessa following a few paces behind. Instead, he takes another left into a secluded hallway. It’s empty, at the end of it is just the staff room, and there is no light coming from behind the door. They’re alone.

“Are you fucking kidding me?” Scott whispers as soon as they round the corner. “What a douche-face. What a fucking joke.”

“I know,” Tessa whispers back.

“But you’re flirting with him anyway,” Scott reminds her, shooting her a look that makes her raise an eyebrow.

“No, I’m not,” she says.

“He keeps touching you and you keep giggling,” he insists. “He isn’t even nice. He’s an idiot, T. A _sexist_ idiot.”

“You’re a little jealous, eh?” she challenges and catches his hand in hers.

“No,” he says, way too quickly.

 

“I think it would be cute if you were,” she confesses and their eyes lock as she starts smirking. She’s serious.

“Well then, I am _very_ jealous,” he tells her and watches her grin. He’s not really jealous, not completely anyway, but if she gets something out of it, fine, she can know. She blinks up at him and wets her lips, like she wants him to kiss her and he checks over his shoulder briefly to make sure the coast is clear to oblige her, happily. She kisses him back, just for a moment, with a smile on her mouth.

“I wanna get out of here,” he says against her lips before he pulls away. Get out of the restaurant, back home with her, out of their clothes and into bed and never think about having to sit through a date with someone else and watch her do the same ever again.

“Just dessert and then we’ll go,” she promises, squeezes his hand one more time and then lets him go. 

“I hate this dude,” Scott tells her, unnecessarily, but it still wanted out.

“It’s just for the night, baby,” she reasures him, pecks him quickly just on the corner of his lips and then charges ahead, back out, back to their dates. He sends a prayer up to the sky that dessert gets there quickly, so he can just take the right girl home and ditch the others.

 

About an hour later, after his prayers have been answered and they’re finally through with that strange dinner, Scott is already under the covers in her bedroom when Tessa exits from her ensuite, her hair undone and dressed in tiny little sleep shorts and a skimpy top he thinks is just for his benefit.

“She just texted me,” he tells her as she burrows in next to him, nodding to his phone on the nightstand where Claire’s last row of texts sits seen and unanswered.

“Why does she have your number?” Tessa asks, sort of piqued-sounding and draws the blanket up so only her head is still visible. Her forehead is in testy wrinkles.

“Because she asked,” Scott shrugs. “I couldn’t say no, I’m supposed to be single, right?”

“Well, you could’ve also been turned off by her whole Discount-Scarlett Johansson shtik and shot her down because of _that_ ,” Tessa says, pouting.

“Who’s jealous now, eh?” Scott can’t help but grin because she’s adorable and he loves her. “Come on, T, she was totally ditzy.”

“Oh, but she wasn’t. She just wants you to think she is,” his girlfriend grumbles, making him reach over and pull her onto his chest. “What does she want?”

“To go out, just the two of us,” he replies to a displeased and rather unforgiving grunt from Tessa. “I’m not going to.”

“You better not,” she grumbles.

“Come on, babe. That’s not even a question,” he promises and it’s silly that he has to.

“I know, I trust you,” she murmurs, thank God. “Anyway, I don’t like decoy dating. If we go on Ellen next week and deny this, people will leave us alone about it anyway.”

 

They do deny it on Ellen. Only that it’s kind of weak and when Ellen, the real actual celebrity, Ellen DeGeneres, asks them if they’re a couple, Tessa says no, but Scott, for whatever stupid reason, nods. Nobody realises it as it happens (and he hadn’t even noticed that he’d done it) but their ‘shippers’ have a field day with it later. They pour over the whole interview, Tessa reads him a couple of tweets about it later. It’s a circus.

 

And the articles, they continue to come out. He reads one interview Tessa gives on the matter himself, mostly because she’s out showing off her first cover to everyone in town she knows, her face on ‘Peony’ magazine, all casual like she’s always been a model, and Scott guesses it’s alright. She denies they’re together again in the article, somewhat at least. It’s all good, they have done good at Ellen, at least they got the words out, established the party line (“It’s a compliment that people believed us!”). 

 

They’ll be fine, he knows they will be. Eventually, surely, people will move on.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> UGH, Ryan. That stupid video he made still makes me angry, god dammit, T, what were you thinking?!

**Author's Note:**

> Thoughts? I always appreciate them!


End file.
